Elon Musk confirmed earlier this year that he had welcomed a new baby with Neuralink CEO Shivon Zilis. This is the couple’s third child together and Musk’s 12th child.
The 52-year-old business magnate told Page Six that his new addition was by no means a “secret,” but thought it was a little “bizarre” to make a statement about the birth.
“As for ‘secretly conceived,’ that’s also wrong,” he told the outlet. “All of our friends and family know. Not issuing a press release, which would be bizarre, doesn’t make it ‘secret.'”
The baby, whose name and gender were not disclosed, is Musk’s 12th child and was reportedly born sometime earlier this year. Before the birth, Musk already had two children with 38-year-old Zilis, the chief executive of Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink.
News of the tech entrepreneur’s twelfth child was first reported on Friday in a Bloomberg article that took a close look at Musk and his comments on the birth rate.
In July 2022, it was reported that Musk had two children with Zilis. Court documents obtained by insider announced that Musk and Zilis’ children were born in November 2021 – weeks before Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child.
Almost two years after the twins were born, it was revealed that their names were Strider and Azure.
In his biography Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson also confirmed in September 2023 that Musk and musician Grimes have a third child named Techno Mechanius, also called Tau.
Grimes and Musk’s first child, a boy named X Æ A-Xii or X, was born in 2020. In March 2022, they announced the birth of a girl, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, nicknamed Y, who was born in December 2021.
Musk has been married twice. He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Musk and Wilson married in 2000 and had their first child, Nevada Alexander Musk, two years later.
Tragically, her firstborn died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of ten weeks.
“There is nothing worse than losing a child,” Musk said in a 2018 email to a father who had lost his son in a Tesla accident.
“My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat,” he also wrote on X in 2022.
Wilson and Musk had twins, Griffin and Vivian, in 2004 and triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian Musk, in 2006.
In June 2023, it was reported that Musk and Wilson’s teenage daughter had been granted the name and gender change she requested. Her daughter identifies as a transgender woman and requested in a court filing in April in Los Angeles County Superior Court that her name should reflect her new gender identity and that she should sever all ties with Musk.
“I no longer live with my biological father and do not wish to be related to him in any way,” the documents filed in Santa Monica state.
At the time, Wilson said she was “proud” of her daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson and that she had made the decision to cut ties with Musk.
Musk, who now has a total of 12 children, has long been publicly vocal about his belief that declining birth rates could lead to the collapse of civilization.
In 2022 the billionaire tweeted that “population collapse due to low birth rates poses a much greater risk to civilization than global warming.”
He also expressed a similar opinion regarding the declining birth rate after it was revealed that he had fathered twins with Shivon Zilis.
“I’m doing my best to combat the underpopulation crisis. A collapse in the birth rate is by far the greatest threat to civilization,” he tweeted, poking fun at the reports. “I hope you have big families and congratulations to those who already do!”