The woman who reportedly broke up Elon Musk and Sergey Brin’s longstanding friendship grew up in poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area before becoming a lawyer and dating some of the world’s richest men.
Nicole Shanahan, 37, is said to have had a brief fling with Musk at Art Basel, a multi-day art event in Miami last December, prompting her to google co-founder husband to file for divorce in January.
Brin, who is estimated to have a net worth of $95 billion, cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason, but The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Musk’s flirtation with Nicole marked the end of their marriage.
They were both in Miami for the arts festival, at a time when Shanahan and Brin were reportedly already having marital problems due to the stress of COVID-19 and raising their 4-year-old daughter.
Musk, meanwhile, had just separated from girlfriend Grimes.
About a month later, Brin filed for divorce, naming their date of separation on December 15. He has also reportedly instructed his aides to get all of his investments out of Musk’s many companies.
Now sources say Shanahan is asking $1 million for her divorce — more than she agrees to in a prenup, but far from what she had as a child, when she lived off food stamps and tried to help her two unemployed parents financially.
Since then, she has been hailed as a ‘changemaker’ for the work she has done on criminal justice reform, helping to improve the environment and researching women’s reproductive longevity.
Nicole Shanahan, 37, grew up on food stamps with two unemployed parents before becoming an entrepreneur. She is pictured here in September at the Museum of Motion Pictures opening gala in Los Angeles
Shanahan is said to have had an affair with Tesla CEO Elon Musk when they were both at Art Basel, a multi-day art event in Miami, last December. The affair reportedly led her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, to file for divorce and ended his friendship with Musk.
In an interview with Modern luxury magazineShanahan talked about the struggles she faced as a child and how they led her to become a self-employed entrepreneur.
“As a kid, I really had to figure out how the world works for myself,” she said, explaining how her father was diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia when she was young, and her mother was a Chinese immigrant trying to make it in America.
“My father was diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia when I was 9 and my Chinese-born mother had only been in the US for two years when I was born,” Shanahan said.
“I had two unemployed parents for most of my childhood, so not only was there no money, there was almost no parental guidance,” she continued, “and as you can imagine with a mentally ill father, there was a lot of chaos and fear.” .’
So, she said, she learned to make it on her own, get tables at age 12, and use the new internet to help her graduate and apply for college and jobs.
“I’ve learned how to compete in very creative ways by making broken objects perform at a level beyond their perceived capacity.”
In 2003, she attended the University of Puget Sound, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and Mandarin Chinese, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She then studied global intellectual property trade and Chinese law at the National University of Singapore in 2013, before entering law at Santa Clara University.
Shanahan has said that her struggle in poverty had led her to become resourceful
In 2020, she founded Bia-Echo, an investment company that puts money into organizations that support reproductive longevity and equality; criminal law reform; and maintaining a healthy and livable planet
By the time she was in her early 20s, Modern Luxury reports, she got a job at RPX Corporation as a patent specialist, but quit after just 10 months after being sexually assaulted.
Shanahan said she then developed severe depression, retired from law and moved in with her aunt for a while.
But after a while, she was able to get her feet back on the ground — even founding her own AI-enabled patent management company, ClearAccessIP, which she sold last year.
Since then, she has devoted her time to Bia-Echo, an investment company she founded that puts money into organizations that support reproductive longevity and equality; criminal law reform; and maintaining a healthy and livable planet, according to its website.
Shanahan had previously supported these goals through her husband’s organization, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, but started working towards these goals herself in 2020, when she founded the foundation.
It has since partnered with the Buck Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality and the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore to establish the Bia-Echo Asia Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality, where scientists conduct research on fertility. of women.
It is also working on ways to promote soil health and make agriculture carbon neutral.
In addition, Shanahan has served as an academic fellow at Code X, the Stanford Center of Legal Informatics – a joint center between Stanford Law School and Computer Science – where she launched the Smart Prosecution project, a multidisciplinary effort that applies data science to the collaborative prosecution process. between public prosecutors and civil society organisations.
Her goal, she says, is to create a “legacy of ideas.”
“I want my legacy to be one of ideas,” she said. “I want it to be about developing the human experience on this planet in an abundant way.
“I want it to be one of strength, love and compassion. I want it to be one of hard work, learning from mistakes and personal growth.’
Shanahan had met Brin – the eighth richest man in the world – at a yoga retreat in 2015, and the two married in a private ceremony on November 7, 2018
In her personal life, Shanahan was married to a finance executive before meeting and getting married Brin – the eighth richest man in the world – during a yoga retreat in 2015.
They then married in a quiet wedding ceremony on Nov. 7, 2018, according to the Economic Times.
They later welcomed a daughter into the world after years of suffering from fertility problems, which Shanahan has spoken about publicly.
“Like many women in their early thirties not quite ready to start a family, I decided, or so I thought at the time, to take matters into my own hands and freeze embryos,” she said. Page six in 2019.
“But after three failed embryonic attempts and three dozen visits to in vitro fertilization clinics in the Bay Area, I found I wasn’t nearly as unshakable as I thought I was.”
But in January, Brin filed for divorce from his wife of four years after he allegedly learned about her flirtation with Musk.
He cited “irreconcilable differences” in divorce papers, but asked for the deed to be sealed to protect his young daughter.
The Google founder is now asking for custody of her to be shared as part of the divorce settlements, which they are trying to keep private for fear their daughter is at risk of “harassment” or “kidnapping.”
Musk had been friends with Brin for years prior to the alleged affair, and Brin even gave Musk $500,000 to fund Tesla at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. They are pictured here with Larry Page in the early 2000s.
Shanahan’s affair brought an abrupt end to Elon and Sergey’s longstanding friendship.
The two tech giants were seen together several times in the early 2000s, and in 2008, Sergey gave Tesla $500,000 in financing at the height of the financial crisis.
Elon has also spoken fondly of crashing at Sergey’s houses.
At a party after Sergey filed for divorce, Musk allegedly ran into him and begged for forgiveness.
He publicly accepted his apology, but the two – who were once close friends – no longer speak regularly, the Journal sources say.
Brin has now reportedly ordered his aides to sell his multiple stakes in Musk’s many companies.
Musk has not yet responded to the allegations.