A guide to Elon Musk’s big family

Elon Musk’s father has said he is worried about his son not being able to find a partner, despite being the world’s richest man having been married three times and fathered nine children.

In what Insider described as “a wide-ranging 20-minute interview” on Australia’s The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Errol Musk said that while “Elon has in fact sort of really surpassed the mark” in his business ventures his “pride and joy” was Elon’s younger brother Kimbal.

Errol told the radio show that Kimbal was lucky in his marriage with Cristiana Wyly because they spent a lot of time together, while Elon “has to find a woman to give up what she’s doing, and that’s not easy”.

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‘Complicated’ personal life

It is fair to say Musk has a somewhat “complicated personal life that includes three marriages and three divorces, including two of each with the same woman”, said the Daily Mail.

His first marriage to Canadian author Justine Wilson in 2000 ended in 2008. He then tied the knot with actress Talulah Riley in 2010 but, having divorced in 2012, the couple remarried in 2013 with “a prenup that gives Riley a undisclosed lump sum in exchange for waiving all spousal support”, reported Page Six.

Since the couple divorced for a second time, Musk has been romantically involved with a string of celebrities, including Amber Heard and the musician Grimes. In an interview with Vanity Fair she revealed the pair were in a “fluid” relationship. Then hours after the story was published she tweeted that the pair had since split.

This summer, it was revealed that Musk had had two children with Shivon Zilis, a former project director at Tesla and currently the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a company that develops implantable brain-machine interfaces, where Musk is also co-chief executive.

According to court documents obtained by Business Insider in July 2022, Musk and Zilis welcomed twins in November 2021.

They reportedly filed a petition to change the twins’ names, which have not been made public, in order to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name”.

Musk’s children

As well as his twins with Zilis, the Tesla founder has seven other living children. Musk’s first child, Nevada Alexander Musk, who was born in 2002, died at just ten weeks of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

“After losing their firstborn, Musk and Wilson turned to IVF to grow their family,” reported Page Six, having a set of twins, Vivian and Griffin in 2004, followed by triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian two years later.

In June this year, it was revealed that Vivian had legally changed her gender recognition from male to female after turning 18, the age of consent in California, and had also changed her name “to disassociate herself from her billionaire father”, reported The Guardian.

TMZ, which first broke the story, reported that the filed documents showed “the name change isn’t just about her transitioning, there’s clearly a rift with dear ol’ Dad”, after she listed her reasons for the name change as “gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form”.

Musk also has two children with Canadian musician Grimes, real name Claire Boucher. The first, a boy named X Æ A-XII, was born in 2020, while their daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl, was born through surrogacy in December 2021. According to The New York Times, family members call them X and Y respectively.

The Sun reported that Musk’s “growing brood may be because he loves kids – or because he feels civilisation will ‘crumble’ without more humans”.

The paper has quoted him as saying “there are not enough people, I can't emphasise this enough. There are not enough people. If people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble. Mark my words.”

The parents and siblings

Errol, “the family’s patriarch”, made a name for himself in his native South Africa as “a high-powered engineer, property developer and political advocate who vehemently opposed apartheid”, said New York Post. His mother Maye is a model and nutritionist.

Errol is now married to and shares two children with his own 34-year-old stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout. He told the Kyle and Jackie O show their relationship was “completely normal”.

Elon’s brother Kimbal is also an entrepreneur who founded a non-profit organisation that aims bring fresh produce to cities across the US. Their sister Tosca co-founded the streaming service Passionflix, which brings romance novels to life on the small screen.