Elon Musk has confirmed that he welcomed a new baby with Neuralink CEO Shivon Zilis earlier this year, the couple’s third child together and Musk’s twelfth offspring.
The business mogul, 52, told Page Six that his latest addition was by no means a “secret” but thought releasing a statement about the birth would have been just a bit “bizarre.”
“As for ‘conceived in secret’, that is also incorrect,” he told the newspaper. “All our friends and family know. Not issuing a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret’.”
The baby, whose name or gender has not been revealed, is Musk’s twelfth child and was born sometime earlier this year, reports say. Before the birth, Musk already had two children with 38-year-old Zilis, the director of Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink.
News of the tech businessman’s twelfth child was first reported in a Bloomberg article published Friday that delved into Musk and his comments on birth rates.
In July 2022, it was reported that Musk welcomed two children with Zilis. Court documents obtained by Insider revealed that Musk and Zilis’ children were born in November 2021 – weeks before Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child.
Nearly two years after the twins were born, their names were revealed to be Strider and Azure.
In his biography Elon Musk Walter Isaacson also confirmed in September 2023 that Musk and the musician Grimes had a third child, named Techno Mechanius, who goes by the name Tau.
Grimes and Musk’s first child, a boy named X Æ A-Xii, or 2021. .
Musk has been married twice before. He met his first wife, Canadian writer Justine Wilson, while the couple was studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Musk and Wilson tied the knot in 2000 and welcomed their first child, Nevada Alexander Musk, two years later.
Tragically, their firstborn died of cot death when he was ten weeks old.
“There is nothing worse than losing a child,” Musk said in a 2018 email to a father who lost his son in a Tesla crash.
“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 received the name and gender change she requested. Their daughter identifies as a trans woman, and in an April lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, she requested that her name reflect her new gender identity and cut all ties with Musk.
“I no longer live with my biological father and do not wish to be related to my biological father in any way,” according to the paperwork kept in Santa Monica.
Wilson said at the time that she was “proud” of her daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson for making the decision to cut ties with Musk.
Musk, who has now fathered a total of 12 children, has long been vocal about his belief that falling birth rates could lead to the collapse of civilization.
In 2022, the billionaire tweeted that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a far greater risk to civilization than global warming.”
He also echoed a similar sentiment about declining birth rates after news broke that he fathered twins with Shivon Zilis.
“I am doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A declining birth rate is by far the greatest danger facing civilization,” he tweeted, making light of the messages. “I hope you have large families and congratulations to those who already do!”