Elon Musk had twins last year with one of his top executives, report says
Elon Musk had twins with a top executive at Neuralink, director of operations and special projects Shivon Zilis, in November, according to a report in Insider that cited court documents related to the children.
Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed the court documents to ask for their children's names to be changed to include Musk's last name, according to the redacted legal documents posted by Insider. The petition asked that their names "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name," a request that Insider reported was granted earlier this year.
The twins were born shortly before the birth of Musk's second child with musician Grimes, who welcomed a baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk via surrogate in December. Musk, who has fathered 10 children and is the world's wealthiest person with more than $200 billion in wealth, has been an outspoken proponent of raising the birth rate, tweeting in May that the U.S. birth rate has been "below min sustainable levels for ~50 years."
Tesla and Neuralink did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch. On Thursday morning, after Insider's report, Musk tweeted that he was "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,"claiming that a "collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."
In another tweet, Musk said, "I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!"
Zilis, a Yale graduate, joined Neuralink in 2017, according to her LinkedIn page. She's also a fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, which she describes as a machine learning incubator at the University of Toronto in her bio, and serves on the board of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.
Musk had six children with Canadian author Justine Wilson, who was married to Musk from 2000 to 2008. Their first child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, when he was 10 weeks old, Wilson wrote in a Marie Claire article. The couple then had twins followed by triplets.
Earlier this year, one of the twins petitioned to legally change their name and gender to Vivian Jenna Wilson, a request that was granted, with Vivian stating in court papers that she "no longer live[s] with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
Musk also has two children with musician Grimes. The first, a boy named X Æ A-12, was born in March 2020, while their second was born in December, just weeks after his twins with Zilis were born.
