How Many Children Does Elon Musk Have?

Name-change documents filed in Texas show that the outspoken entrepreneur recently fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, a director at one of his companies.

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, had twins in November with Shivon Zilis, a director at one of his companies, according to court documents made public on Wednesday. Neither Mr. Musk nor Ms. Zilis has spoken publicly about their children.

The news was reported by Insider, which published documents showing that Ms. Zilis and Mr. Musk filed two petitions in state court in Travis County, Texas, in April to change their children’s names to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name.”

How many children does Mr. Musk have? His twins with Ms. Zilis bring the known total of Mr. Musk’s children to nine.

Mr. Musk also has two children with Claire Bouchard, better known as the musician Grimes, and five — a set of twins and a set of triplets — with his first wife, the writer Justine Musk.

Grimes’s second child with Mr. Musk, a daughter born through surrogacy, arrived in December. Their daughter’s name is Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (or Y, as her parents call her). Grimes and Mr. Musk also have a boy named X Æ A-XII, who was born in 2020 (family members call him X).

Nine is … a lot. Is he a fan of big families? Mr. Musk has spoken in the past about his concerns that people are not procreating enough. On Thursday, after the Insider report began making the rounds, he wrote on Twitter: “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Mr. Musk, who did not respond to a message seeking comment, tweets frequently to his 100 million followers on the platform. Mr. Musk is in negotiations to acquire the company for about $44 billion, though he has previously broached the issue of fake accounts on the site, insisting that the deal — which includes a $1 billion breakup fee — could not move forward without more information.

“I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!” he added. An older thread about declining fertility rates in the United States was pinned to the top of his page.

What’s his approach to fatherhood? In an interview with The New York Times in 2020, shortly after his son with Grimes was born, Mr. Musk said: “Right now there’s not much I can do. Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now. When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me.”

Are Grimes and Mr. Musk still together? Mr. Musk’s child with Ms. Zilis was born weeks before his second child with Grimes. In March, Grimes wrote on Twitter that she and Mr. Musk had “broken up *again*.” Nonetheless, she called him “my best friend and the love of my life.”