Inside Elon Musk’s complex family from Tesla CEO & Neuralink’s Shivon Zilis ‘secretly welcoming twins’ to estranged dad
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THE IMAGINED stresses of operating multiple billion-dollar companies make it difficult to think of Elon Musk as a family man.
But Musk is the son of two entrepreneurs and the eldest cousin in a large family of business dynamos - even without Elon, the name Musk would likely be a notable one today.
Errol Musk
Errol Musk is Elon's father and a controversial figure in his son's life and in the public's eye.
Elon told Rolling Stone that he admired his father's engineering genius, but also said Errol is "such a terrible human being, you have no idea."
Errol fathered a child with his stepdaughter Jane after divorcing her mother - he first met Jane when she was four years old.
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Maye Musk
Maye Musk had a unique childhood herself - her father was an archeologist and flew the family around the world in a small plane.
Each summer, Maye, her twin sister Kaye and their two other siblings would scan the Kalahari desert looking for a lost ancient city.
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According to Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon, Maye thought her son might be deaf because he would often enter a trance-like state, blocking out the world around him.
He wasn't deaf, just thinking very hard - Elon still does this today when thinking about complex engineering problems at social events.
Maye went on to become a model, dietician, author and socialite - she joked to The New York Times "I was famous until Elon became famous."
Kimbal Musk
Kimbal Musk, 49, is known today as a South African restaurateur, chef, and entrepreneur.
He owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group which has restaurants located in Colorado, Memphis, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Chicago - he refocused his energy on organic foods and food affordability while recovering from a broken neck.
Kimbal followed his brother Elon to Canada in their late teens, and the two initially lived a challenging lifestyle, showering at the YMCA and living on the bare minimum.
During this period they worked on Zip2, Elon's first multi-million dollar company.
Kimbal is married to Christiana Wyly, the daughter of ex-billionaire Sam Wyly.
Tosca Musk
Tosca, 47, is a South African filmmaker who co-founded the streaming service Passionflix - the platform is focused on bringing romance novels to the big screen.
While Elon and Kimbal lived with Errol during their youth, Tosca lived with their mother Maye.
She penned an essay for Sports Illustrated about her mother and said of herself: "My goal is to empower women."
The Rive brothers
Lyndon, Peter, and Russ Rive are the sons of Maye Musk's twin sister.
Ashlee Vance's biography says when they were children, Elon would steer Kimbal and the Rive brothers into mischief with his knowledge of chemical explosives.
Peter and Lyndon served as founders and executives at SolarCity - the company built commercial solar technologies and was acquired by Tesla for $2.6billion dollars in 2016.
The Rive brothers briefly worked at Tesla before departing to join ZOLA Electric, an energy company focused on delivering renewables to homes in Africa.
Justine Wilson
Elon met Justine Wilson while they attended Queens University in Canada.
Elon's success with Zip2 and PayPal were inflection points in their relationship - he had always had ambition, but suddenly Wilson was dating a successful entrepreneur and not an aspiring one.
While dancing at their wedding reception, Elon told Wilson "I am the alpha in this relationship" according to an essay Wilson wrote for Marie Claire titled "I Was a Starter Wife".
Wilson and Musk's first child, a boy named Nevada Alexander, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome aged 10 weeks old.
Vivian Jenna Wilson
Vivian Jenna Wilson - born Xavier Alexander Musk - was born to Elon and Justine in 2004 alongside twin brother Griffin.
The 18-year-old has filed legal documents requesting that her name be changed to Vivian Jenna Wilson, according to an April filing in the Superior Court of California, TMZ reported.
Vivian spurned her father in the document, writing "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
Elon has been accused of being dismissive of transgenderism and the use of alternative pronouns.
The billionaire once tweeted "I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare."
Talulah Riley
Actress Talulah Riley married and divorced Musk twice in six years.
Ashlee Vance's biography says that when they first met, Musk showed Riley pictures and videos of SpaceX rockets in a geeky attempt at flirting.
Musk said after their first divorce "We took some time apart for several months to see if absence makes the heart grow fonder, and unfortunately it did not. I still love her, but I’m not in love with her."
They remarried in 2013 and their second divorce, initiated by Riley, was finalized in 2016.
Grimes
Grimes - real name Claire Boucher - dated Musk from 2018 to 2021.
In May 2020, they welcomed a son but caused controversy with the choice of name - X Æ A-12 - and were forced to change it to X AE A-XII by Californian authorities because it contained symbols not included in the alphabet.
The couple then used a surrogate to give birth to their baby daughter, Exa Dark Siderael - also known as Y - who was born in December.
When they were romantically linked, Grimes said of their relationship: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid."
Amber Heard
Amber Heard and Elon shared a hot and heavy romance from 2016 to 2017 but Heard's ex Johnny Depp believed they were linked earlier than that.
Depp appeared to threaten Musk, writing: "Let’s see if Mollusk has a pair, comes to see me face-to-face. I will show him things he’s never seen before, like the other side of his d**k when I slice it off.”
A source told the Mail On Sunday when Heard and Musk broke up: "It’s all over between Amber and Elon and she’s devastated. It was his decision."
Floki Musk
Musk is the owner of a Shiba Inu named Floki.
The Japanese breed is the mascot for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
Musk tweeted that he would buy a Shiba Inu during the heyday of the penny-crypto's rise - he's since been named as the defendant in a lawsuit over Dogecoin.
Elon Musk's family is highly entrepreneurial and his relationships with women have burned hot.
To think it all the rockets, electric cars, relationships and controversy started with a bookish child in South Africa is quite a trip.
SHIVON ZILIS
It emerged on July 6 that the SpaceX founder had welcomed two more children with a top female executive at his company Neuralink.
Shivon Zilis, 36, is the third woman the entrepreneur has had kids with.
Musk met Zilis through her work with OpenAI, the nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015.
Elon appeared to acknowledge the births with a tweet where he jokingly said he's trying to help Earth's "underpopulated crisis"
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"A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."
He added: "Mark my words, they are sadly true."