Elon Musk has fathered at least 12 children, three of whom came from a non-romantic, seemingly business relationship with a colleague. But he had his reasons.

Over the course of two decades, Elon Musk fathered a whopping 12 children, at least, with three different women. Out of the dozen, nine came from the tech billionaire’s marriage to ex-wife Justine Wilson as well as Musk’s famously tumultuous relationship with musician Grimes. The remaining three hail from his somewhat odd relationship with his company, Neuralink Corp’s, director Shivon Zilis. According to Insider, the pair welcomed twins in November 2021, only about a month before Musk’s twins with Grimes were born through surrogacy. Then, in 2024, the controversial commentator casually informed Page Six that he had welcomed a third child with Zilis that very same year. Shortly after the Insider report went live, the Tesla founder took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to supposedly explain his reasoning for fathering children outside of his current relationship.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk wrote. Although it seemed like he was making a bizarre joke to avoid judgment, Musk was being honest about his motivations because the businessman has been vocal about his fears surrounding declining population rates for years. “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” he tweeted in 2022. Similarly, in a 2024 tweet, Musk cautioned that the declining population rates in Asia and Europe indicated that countries could “empty of people and fall into ruin, like the remains we see of the many long dead civilizations.”

Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis’ connection wasn’t romantic

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According to several Reuters sources, Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis were never engaged in a romantic relationship and conceived their children through IVF. In Walter Isaacson’s biography about the world’s richest man, Zilis shared her reasoning for having kids with Musk: “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” per E! News. “If the choice is between an anonymous sperm donor or doing it with the person you admire most in the world, for me that was a pretty f***** easy decision.” She added that her children won the genetic lottery by having Musk as their father. While gushing about the X owner’s intelligence, Ellis stated that she was grateful he imparted some of his wisdom to her too.

Elsewhere, Zilis confessed to Isaacson that she had always wanted to be a mother but wasn’t too keen on the idea of marriage, so she was happy to go through IVF with Musk after he confided in her about his fears about population decline. The mother-of-three was well aware that the tech billionaire wouldn’t be a regular dad because he’s an incredibly busy individual. To some extent, she was correct, subsequently learning that Musk’s personality also prevented him from being emotionally available. However, she was pleasantly surprised when he stayed over regularly and was super sweet to the kids. Given all this, it makes sense that Ellis broke through her private persona to defend Musk on X.

Shivon Zilis had a very public tiff with Grimes

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According to Walter Isaacson’s biography, Grimes only learned that her then-partner was the father of Shivon Zilis’ twins alongside the rest of the world and she was understandably furious about it, per The Wall Street Journal. Shortly after Isaacson published an excerpt revealing that Elon Musk’s twins were a boy named Strider and a girl named Azure, the singer took to X to put Zilis and the SpaceX founder on blast in a since-deleted post which read: “Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or [please] respond to my lawyer. I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart,” per People.

Interestingly, a Reddit user discovered that Musk and Grimes’ son, X Æ A-12 may have been residing with him and Zilis through a 2023 post that showed them photographed against similar backgrounds. Shortly after posting her original tweet, Grimes wrote another X post explaining that she had touched base with Zilis and urged people not to direct any hate towards her because she wasn’t at fault. Still, the singer admitted, “Communication about the twins wasn’t handled super well in the past.” Ultimately, Grimes hoped their children would all grow up in each other’s company. Zilis sweetly responded by gushing about the singer and confirming that she longed to see their kids having fun together too.