Elon Musk has held many jobs—including CEO of Tesla and CEO and chief engineer at SpaceX, among others—but he’s also played the role of father to 10 children.
The 51-year-old billionaire first experienced fatherhood, then sudden grief, with the birth and then death of his first child in 2002.
After the unexpected loss, Musk had two sets of multiples.
But his most famous children are perhaps the two he had with singer Grimes, because of their unusual names.
That is, until now. On Wednesday, a bombshell report came out that Musk is having twins with one of his top executives at Neuralink.
But what did he say about raising his Brady Bunch?
Nevada Alexander Musk
Musk and his then-wife Justine Wilson welcomed their first son, named Nevada Alexander Musk, on May 18, 2002. The boy died just 10 weeks later of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.
The new father rarely mentioned his loss, but expressed his condolences in a chain of emails with the father of an 18-year-old boy who died in a fiery Tesla crash in 2018.
“There is nothing worse than losing a child,” Musk wrote, according to Bloomberg. “My firstborn son died in my arms. I felt his heartbeat.”
Elon Musk’s children pile onto his back in this 2017 photo shared by his ex-girlfriend Amber Heard. amberheard/Instagram
Vivian Wilson and Griffin, Kai, Saxon and Damian Musk
Over the next five years, Wilson gave birth to twins, Griffin and Vivian in 2004, and triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian Musk, in 2006.
Vivian, now 18, recently came out as transgender and legally changed her name from Xavier Musk, including taking her mother’s last name. In court, Vivian said she “no longer lives with or wishes to be associated with my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
Years before Vivian’s transition, Musk wrote in a 2010 op-ed for Business Insider about his public divorce from the mother of his children, Justine Wilson. Musk said he paid his ex $20,000 a month for the children’s clothes, food and other necessities in addition to Wilson’s child support and nanny wages.
“Custody of our five children is split equally,” Musk said. “Almost all my non-working hours are spent with my boys and they are the love of my life.”
I love all my children so much
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2022
Musk pulled his children out of private school and enrolled them in Ad Astra, the school he founded in 2014.
Meaning “to the stars” in Latin, Ad Astra started on SpaceX’s campus, enrolling just 50 students. It is now an online school that has no grading system, but teaches courses in artificial intelligence, coding and applied sciences, according to the website of the school, now known as Astra Nova.
“Kids really like going to school,” Musk said on China’s BTV in 2017. “I think that’s a good sign… They actually think vacations are too long. They want to go back to school.
But in a 2021 interview on the Clubhouse app, Musk admitted that his children were raised by the Internet.
“Well, my observation is that my kids were mostly taught by YouTube and Reddit, and then you know, their — I guess — classmates,” he said. “I guess there were tutorials, but judging by the amount of time they spend online, it seems like most of their education actually comes from online.”
Griffin, Kai, Damian and Saxon Musk leave the Aman Venice Hotel on July 2. Cobra Team / BACKGRID
X AE A-XII Musk
Musk and his then-girlfriend Grimes introduced their son, X AE A-XII, to the world in May 2020. The internet went crazy over the boy’s strange name, which the former couple can’t seem to agree on how to pronounce.
On Instagram, the singer wrote: “It’s just X, like the letter X. Then AI Like how you said the letter A and then I.”
However, Musk said on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that the “X” is pronounced “like the letter” while the “Æ” is pronounced like “ash.” ” The proud father said that “A-12 was [his] contribution’ while Grimes came up with the rest of the baby’s name.
In 2021, Musk gave a rare interview discussing his newborn.
•X, the unknown variable ⚔️•Æ, my Elvish spelling of Ai (love and/or artificial intelligence)•A-12 = predecessor of the SR-17 (our beloved plane). No weapons, no defense, just speed. Great in battle but no violence 🤍+ (A=Archangel, my favorite song) (⚔️🐁 metal rat)
— 𝔊𝔦𝔯𝔪𝔰 (⌛️,⏳) ᚷᚱᛁᛗᛖᛋ (@Grimezsz) May 6, 2020
“Well, babies are just eating and pooping machines, you know?” he said.
“I think babies are super cool, and really people should have more babies because it sounds obvious, but if people don’t have enough babies, humanity will disappear.”
He also provided a deeper insight into his parenting style.
“There’s not much I can do right now,” Musk said.
“Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now. When the child grows up, there will be more of a role for me,” he continued. “I think I’m just doing what I’ve done with my other kids. If I have a Tesla trip to China, for example, I’ll take the kids with me and we’ll go see the Great Wall of China, or we took the high-speed train from Beijing to Xi’an and saw the Terracotta Warriors.”
Elon Musk and son X Æ A-XII on stage at the Time Person of the Year event on December 13, 2021. Getty Images for TIME
Exa Dark Sideræl Musk
In May 2022, Grimes announced that she and Musk had secretly added another baby — a girl — to their family via surrogate late last year. However, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk arrived when the pair were no longer dating.
“Grimes and I are, I would say, probably semi-separated,” he told Time in December.
Shivon Zillis and Elon Musk secretly had twins in May 2021. shivon/Twitter
Twins with Siobhan Zillis
Musk confirmed on Thursday that he is the father of twins from an executive at his brain chip company Neuralink, just weeks before welcoming his second child with Canadian pop star Grimes.
“I’m doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. Collapsing birth rates are the greatest danger civilization has ever faced,” he tweeted on Thursday.
I’m doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.
Collapsing birth rates are the greatest danger facing civilization.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022
“Mark my words, they are sadly true,” he continued in a tweet. “Too many people are under the illusion that the Earth is overpopulated, even though fertility trends are so clearly headed for a population crash.”
The twins’ names are still unknown, but their arrival brings Musk’s offspring to 10. Perhaps they will be the first of his kind to want to travel to Mars.
In an interview with Clubhouse in 2021, Musk said he would allow his children to travel to the planet if they wanted to when they grew up.
“Although I have called them [my kids] so far and none of them have said they want to go,” he said. “So they might change their mind, but right now they don’t want to go to Mars.”
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