Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, have welcomed their third child earlier this year, as reported by Bloomberg News. Neuralink, Musk’s brain implant company, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Musk confirmed the news in an interview with the New York Post but did not share the child’s name or gender.
Musk addressed the notion that the birth was kept secret, stating, “As for ‘secretly fathered,’ that is also false. All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.'”
The couple previously had twins in 2021, shortly before Musk welcomed his second child with musician Grimes, a baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. Musk, who is currently the world’s second richest person with a net worth of $207 billion, has often advocated for increasing the global birth rate. In a 2022 tweet, he described declining birth rates as “the biggest danger civilization faces by far” and noted his personal efforts to counteract the underpopulation crisis.
Musk elaborated on this in his interview with the Post, stating, “Many countries are already well below replacement rate, and the trend is that almost all will be. This is simply a fact, not a ‘debunked theory.'” He highlighted the economic and social challenges posed by declining birth rates in developed countries, including increased financial strain on government services and pensions like Social Security. The OECD has also flagged these issues, noting factors such as the high cost of housing and difficulties balancing careers and family life as reasons for the decline.
Elon Musk now has a total of 12 children with three women. With Canadian author Justine Wilson, to whom he was married from 2000 to 2008, he had six children. Their first child tragically died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at 10 weeks old. The couple then had twins, Griffin and Vivian, in 2004, followed by triplets, Kai, Saxon, and Damian, in 2006.
Musk also shares three children with singer Grimes: X Æ A-12, born in March 2020; Exa Dark Sideræl, born in 2021; and Techno Mechanicus, born in 2023. Alongside Zilis, Musk has twins named Strider and Azure, born in 2021, and their most recent child, whose name has not been disclosed.
Shivon Zilis, a Yale graduate, joined Neuralink in 2017. She has been described as Musk’s “intellectual companion on artificial intelligence” since the founding of OpenAI. Zilis served as an advisor to OpenAI from 2016 to 2019 and was on its board from 2020 to 2023. She is also a fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, a machine-learning incubator at the University of Toronto.
