Elon Musk is the father of 12 children, including a pair of twins and a set of triplets with his ex-wife Justine Wilson and two boys and a girl with ex-girlfriend Grimes
Elon Musk’s family keeps on growing.
Within two decades, the Tesla founder has become a father of 12 children with three women. His first child was born in 2002 and his most recent arrived in 2024.
The first six children he shares with his ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson. After first meeting as students at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, the SpaceX CEO wed Wilson in 2000 — but after seven years of marriage and five kids, the couple officially divorced in 2008.
The entrepreneur went on to marry and divorce actress Talulah Riley twice, though they never had children together. In 2018, Musk and singer-songwriter Grimes (whose real name is Claire Boucher) were linked — and had their first child together in 2020.
Despite splitting up in September 2021, Grimes revealed in a March 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the couple had reconciled and welcomed another child via surrogate in December 2021. At the time, she also revealed that the couple wants more babies — telling the outlet, “we’ve always wanted at least three or four” — but the day the article was released, she tweeted that they had broken up again.
A few weeks prior to the arrival of their second child together, the CEO secretly fathered twins with Shivon Zilis in November 2021, according to court documents published by Insider. In September 2023, a biography about Musk revealed that he and Grimes had secretly welcomed a third child, son Techno Mechanicus.
Musk became a dad again in early 2024. He welcomed baby No. 12 — whose name has yet to be disclosed — with Zilis. Later that year, a source told PEOPLE that Musk and Grimes are looking for a home in Bel Air where they can live with all of his children and their mothers.
During an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, Musk spoke about his children’s futures. He shared that he has no plans to “automatically” give his children shares of his companies “if they have no interest or inclination or ability to manage” his empire.
Learn more about Musk’s family, below.
Nevada Alexander
Musk had his first son, Nevada Alexander, with his first wife, Justine Wilson in 2002. Sadly, at 10 weeks old, he passed away from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
“Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing,” Wilson wrote in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire. “By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead.”
She continued, “He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died.”
Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin
In her Marie Claire essay, Wilson details their journey to expanding their family further.
“I buried my feelings … coping with Nevada’s death by making my first visit to an IVF clinic less than two months later. Elon and I planned to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible. Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets,” she wrote.
In April 2022, one of Musk’s twins petitioned the court to legally change her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson (the maiden name of her mother, Justine Wilson) and to recognize her gender as female. In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, Vivian explained that she no longer wished “to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
The petition was eventually granted in June of that same year.
While speaking to the Financial Times in October 2022, Musk said he believes Vivian doesn’t want to be associated with him because of the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists. “It’s full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil,” said the Tesla CEO. “It [the relationship] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others [children]. Can’t win them all.”
In July 2024, after Musk said he was “tricked” into allowing Vivian to undergo gender-affirming medical treatments and stated that his “son is dead,” Vivian responded on Threads.
“This entire thing is completely made up and there’s a reason for this. He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness,” she wrote.
During an interview with NBC News, Vivian explained her decision to speak out. “I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” she said. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide. … He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous. He had half custody, and he fully was not there.”
Grimes, the mother of three of Musk’s children, posted on X in support of Vivian, writing, “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian.”
In August 2024, Vivian made several more scathing remarks about her father on Threads, calling him “pathetic” and a “serial adulterer.”
Kai, Saxon and Damian
Wilson gave birth to triplets named Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006, two years after having twins. She revealed in a 2017 TedTalk that they were also conceived via IVF, but she and Musk have not discussed the children themselves publicly.
Musk does not often discuss his own family, but he does have strong opinions on increasing the birth rate — stating that there are “not enough people” in the world at Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Council in December 2021.
“I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate,” he said. “Please look at the numbers – if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”
In a 2023 biography on the tech mogul, titled Elon Musk, author Walter Isaacson wrote about Damian, who became a vegetarian at age 8 to “decrease my carbon footprint.”
Isaacson also mentioned that Damian became a classical music prodigy who excelled in math and physics. Musk’s mom, Maye, even once told her son, “I think Damian is brighter than you.”
