Elon Musk Is Now a Father of 12

He and Shivon Zilis apparently welcomed a third child earlier this year.

It seems Nick Cannon isn’t the only famous, rich man on a mission to keep populating the Earth. Bloomberg reports that earlier this year, Elon Musk and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis welcomed their third child together, making Musk a father of (at least) 12.

Musk told “Page Six” that although the public is just now finding out about the baby — whose name and gender isn’t known — the child was not “secretly fathered.” He said: “All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.’”

The billionaire has five children with Justine Wilson, whom he was married to from 2000 to 2008. Musk and Wilson’s son, Nevada, died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at ten weeks in 2002. Musk and ex-girlfriend, Grimes, welcomed a son, X Æ A-Xii in 2020. Their daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl (who goes by “Y”) was born via surrogate the following year. In early 2022, Grimes said the two had broken up, but she later she confirmed that they’d had another son, Techno.

The nature of Musk’s relationship with Zilis is not entirely clear, though they had twins Strider and Azure in November 2021. In Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Musk, Zilis revealed that he “really wants smart people to have kids” and he offered to be her sperm donor so “the kids would be genetically his.” That tracks with Musk’s now-infamous pro-natalist tweet that “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.”

A belated Happy Father’s Day to Musk. Maybe Cannon has some tips for keeping in touch with his growing brood?

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