Elon Musk has secretly fathered twins with Shivon Zilis – an executive at his neurotechnology company Neuralink – it was reported Wednesday, July 6.
According to court documents obtained by Business Insider, the children were born in November 2021, just weeks before the Tesla CEO welcomed his second child via surrogate with his on-again, off-again partner Grimes.
Elon Musk, 51, is now the father of a total of nine children. The billionaire shares five children with ex-wife Justine Wilson – 18-year-old twins and 16-year-old triplets. Musk also has two children with Canadian musician Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) – son X AE A-XII and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl – and two children with Zilis.
Since the report was published that Musk had fathered two more children, a Twitter thread by the SpaceX founder discussing declining birth rates in the US has received renewed attention.
On May 24, Musk tweeted a chart from the Wall Street Journal showing that the total fertility rate in the US has remained below the “replacement” level for the past 50 years.
“The birth rate in the US has been below the bare minimum for 50 years,” he tweeted, before pinning the tweet to his profile.
“Contrary to popular belief, the richer a person is, the fewer children they have,” he added. “I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one child.”
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Three weeks later, Musk posted another tweet in the thread, this time citing his own contribution to the country’s population. “The past two years have been a demographic disaster,” he said. “I mean, I’m doing my part haha”.
In another tweet, he added: “Civilization sterilized”.
Following reports that he fathered twins with 36-year-old Zilis, Musk addressed the news in a series of tweets, echoing a similar sentiment about declining birth rates from his previous thread.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is by far the greatest danger facing civilization,” he said. “Hope you have big families and congratulations to those who already have!”
Musk’s previous Twitter thread has received hundreds of new comments since it was reported that he fathered twins with 36-year-old Zilis.
“Timely tweet,” said writer Kirsten Korosec.
“Man. He wasn’t kidding…” another user tweeted.
“This tweet now has a new perspective,” said one person.
“All this man takes his word for,” wrote another Twitter user.
Court documents show that Musk and Zilis filed a petition in April to change the twins’ name to “their father’s last name” and include part of their mother’s last name. A Texas court approved the request in May. The documents also show that the couple stated the same home address in Austin, Texas, where Tesla is located.
Zilis, a Yale-trained artificial intelligence specialist, is currently the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a Musk-led company that designs computer implants that allow people’s brains to control electronic devices.