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Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, has long been a subject of fascination - not just for his groundbreaking ventures but also for his personal life, which includes 14 children and a complex history with parenthood. His father once told him he would amount to nothing, and he was bullied as a child.
Now, Musk laughs from the top of the world. But do the traumas of his childhood explain his relentless drive to have as many children as possible, give them unpronounceable names, disown his transgender daughter, and minimize child support payments? “There were warning signs", said his first wife and mother of six of his children.
On February 15, the world learned that Musk, 53, had welcomed his 13th child. Just two weeks later, on March 1, news broke that he had fathered a 14th. That was when we realized it was high time to take a deeper look into Musk’s apparent tendency to have children more frequently than most people change their socks.
'I was the smallest kid in the class'
Born and raised in South Africa, Musk grew up with his father, Errol, an electromechanical engineer, pilot, and sailor, and his mother, Maye, a model and dietitian. He was the eldest of three siblings.
Even as a child, he was fascinated by computing, teaching himself to code. At the age of 12, he coded his own video game called Blastar and got $500 for it.
Despite his intelligence, Musk described a challenging childhood marked by bullying. “For the longest time, I was the youngest and the smallest kid in the class because my birthday just happens to fall on almost the last day that they will accept you into school, June 28th. The gangs at school would hunt me down – literally hunt me down!" he told Rolling Stone in 2017.
Eventually, Musk put down the books and started to fight back. He learned karate, judo, and wrestling. That physical education, combined with a physical growth spurt, gave him some confidence.
When he got into a fight with the biggest bully at school and knocked him out with one punch, Musk noticed that the bully never picked on him again. “You punch the bully in the nose. Bullies are looking for targets that won’t fight back. If you make yourself a hard target and punch the bully in the nose, he’s going to beat the shit out of you, but he’s actually not going to hit you again."
'My father was such a terrible human being'
When Musk was nine, his parents divorced. His siblings chose to stay with their mother, while he decided to stay with his father, something he later regretted. “I felt sorry for my father", he told Rolling Stone. "He seemed very sad and lonely by himself. So I thought, ‘I can be company. ' But I didn’t really understand at the time what kind of person he was.”
“It was not a good idea.", Musk added. “He is brilliant; I’m naturally good at engineering because I inherited it from my father, but he was such a terrible human being. My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil,” he said.
Musk about his father: "I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arguments, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better, and he, no way, it just got worse.”
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When asked if, besides emotional abuse, that included physical abuse by his father, Musk replied: "My dad was not physically violent with me. He was only physically violent when I was very young.” He continued with tears in his eyes. "You have no idea about how bad. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. It’s so terrible.”
“In my experience, there is nothing you can do,” Musk added about his father. “Nothing, nothing. I wish. I’ve tried everything. I tried threats, rewards, intellectual arguments, emotional arguments, everything to try to change my father for the better, and he, no way, it just got worse.”
When he was 17, Musk left college and moved to his mother’s home country, Canada, later obtaining passports for his mother, brother and sister to join him there. His father did not like the gesture, Musk recalls. “He said rather contentiously that I’d be back in three months, that I’m never going to make it, that I’m never going to make anything of myself. He called me an idiot all the time. That’s the tip of the iceberg, by the way.”
After Musk became successful, his father Errol even took credit for helping him. Musk was furious to such a degree that it’s listed as fact in his Wikipedia entry.
“One thing he claims is he gave us a whole bunch of money to start, my brother and I, to start up our first company - Zip2, which provided online city guides to newspapers. This is not true,” Musk says.
“He paid nothing for college. My brother and I paid for college through scholarships, loans, and working two jobs simultaneously. The funding we raised for our first company came from a small group of random angel investors in Silicon Valley.”
The warning signs were always there
Musk first met his wife, Justine Wilson, while they were both students at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Justine was in her first year, while Musk was a year ahead of her.
"He invited me out for ice cream. I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door", Willson told Marie Clair in 2010. Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Elon was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands. He's not a man who takes no for an answer."
After Musk's graduation, he continued to pursue Justine persistently. However, they broke up when she moved to Japan to teach English as a second language. A week after she returned to Canada, he called her. She then moved to California for him, they got engaged, and in 2000, they married.
The pair welcomed their first boy, Nevada Alexander, in 2002. At 10 weeks old, he tragically passed away from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). "Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead. He spent three days on life support in a hospital before we made the decision to take him off it", recalled Wilson.
The couple grieved over their son's death but decided to try to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible. In 2004, they welcomed twins Griffin and Vivian, and two years later, a set of triplets — Kai, Saxon, and Damian.
Elon and Justine split up in 2008, and they went through a long and complicated divorce, ending with shared custody of their five children. Justine also received the couple's home in Los Angeles.
In retrospect, there were warning signs, such as Elon's remark, "I am the alpha in this relationship," Wilson shares in an interview. "In the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Elon's judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. "I am your wife," I told him repeatedly, "not your employee." "If you were my employee," he said just as often, "I would fire you."
Wilson added that they had a "dream lifestyle" filled with extravagant events, fancy homes, and a staff that catered to all their needs. However, she felt a lack of intimacy and empathy from Musk.
A car accident served as a "wake-up call" for Wilson. The couple tried counseling, but after just a month, Musk gave her an ultimatum: "to live life as they had or get a divorce." He filed for divorce the next day.
My father is a 'serial adulterer'
In April 2022, Vivian, the transgender daughter of Wilson and Musk, filed legal documents to change her last name to Vivian Jenna Wilson. In the documents, she also asked to be recognized as female. She listed her reason for the name change: "I no longer wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
In October the same year, Musk blamed 'neo-Marxists' in elite schools and universities for turning Vivian against him. 'It's a general sentiment that if you're rich, you're evil,' he said. 'It may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others. Can't win them all, ' he added.
Vivian, Musk's transgender daguhter: “You are not a family man, you are a serial adulterer who won’t stop lying about your own children”
Last August, during an interview for Daily Mail with psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson Musk said that Vivian (he still refers to her as a male, using her birth name) was “killed by the woke-mind virus”, claiming he “was essentially tricked into signing documents authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her, as part of her gender reassignment surgery.
Vivian attacked Musk on Threads, stating, “You are not a family man, you are a serial adulterer who won’t stop lying about your own children”.
Vivian continued taunting him, “You are not a Christian; as far as I’m aware, you’ve never stepped foot in a church. You are not some ‘bastion for equality/progress. You called Arabic the ‘language of the enemy’; when I was 6, you were sued for discrimination multiple times.
"You are not 'saving the planet', you do not give a fuck about climate change. You single-handedly disillusioned me … and somehow people keep believing you for reasons that continue to evade me," she wrote.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged, 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,” Wilson said. Vivian went through the gender reassignment surgery in 2022 when she was 18.
As for Griffin, Vivian's twin brother, he has mainly stayed out of the public eye but joined his father at an American Express event in Miami in May 2024. "That’s my eldest son, Griffin, who was with me at the event," Musk wrote on X under a photo of the two.
Child support? The less the better
In April 2018, Musk sparked dating rumors with musician Grimes after they shared a flirty interaction on Twitter. Just a few days later, the couple first made their relationship public when they attended the Met Gala. Two years later, in January 2020, Grimes announced her pregnancy and confirmed that Musk was the baby's father.
In May 2020, Musk and Grimes welcomed their first baby together, a son named X Æ A-12, and no, it's not a typing error. "X represents the unknown variable. Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence). A-12 refers to the CIA's Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane in the 1960s, which is a precursor to the SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent", explained Grimes.
Fortunately for the baby, a few days later, they learned that according to California laws, you can't have numbers in the baby's name, so they changed the boy's name to X Æ A-Xii, ending in the Roman numeral for 12 instead.
In December 2021, three months after the couple's breakup, the two revealed that they had welcomed a baby girl via surrogate, named Exa Dark Sideræl (also known as "Y"). “We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms,” Musk confirmed.
Grimes said that she would probably refer to Musk as her boyfriend, "We live in separate houses. We're best friends. We see each other all the time... We just have our own thing going on, and I don't expect other people to understand it," she said.
At the time, their relationship seemed to be relatively stable, as it was revealed in September 2023 that the couple had welcomed a third child together.
The surprising news was disclosed by journalist Walter Isaacson in his biography of Musk. He added that, unfortunately for the newborn, Musk and Grimes continued their tradition of giving their children unusual names, naming their son Techno Mechanicus, who also goes by "Tau".
Their amicable relations didn’t last. In November 2023, Grimes claimed in court documents, later published by Insider, that she had hired four different courier companies to track down Musk and serve him with her custody lawsuit.
According to the documents, between October 13 and October 20 of that year, the couriers searched for him at more than a dozen locations, including X’s headquarters in San Francisco, SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, his factories and offices in the Austin area, and a local horse ranch where he regularly rides.
A month earlier, Grimes had filed a complaint in court, accusing Musk of preventing her from seeing their son, X Æ A-Xii. Court records obtained by Page Six reported that Grimes filed a “petition to establish parental relationship”. The request intends to have the court identify the legal parents of a child when they are unmarried.
It was later revealed that Musk quietly sued Grimes for parental rights over their three kids days before she did, requesting that the case be heard in a Texas court. He also accused Grimes of deliberately moving to California with their children to avoid legal proceedings in Texas.
The reason each one of them prefers a different state for the legal proceedings lies in their differing laws. While Musk is certainly not short on cash, he likely wants to minimize financial obligations.
Texas caps monthly child support payments at $1,840 for one child or $2,760 for three children. That means despite Musk's billionaire status, the child support calculator in Texas won't oblige him to pay any value higher than that.
In contrast, California has no such cap, allowing Grimes to request any amount she deems appropriate, with the possibility of a judge approving her claim.
The race for more children
In July 2022, Insider reported that Musk and Shivon Zilis, a senior executive at one of his companies, had twins named Strider and Azure. “I’m doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis", Musk wrote at the time. “Good for big families." I want to have as many children as I can, to spend time and be a good father, he said
Zilis was quick to clarify that she did not have a romantic relationship with Musk and that the twins were conceived via IVF.
In June 2024, Musk confirmed that he and Zilis had welcomed a third child, a daughter named Arcadia. Earlier this month, news broke of the birth of their fourth child. "Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus," Zilis tweeted, receiving a red heart emoji in response from the happy father.
And finally, the child Musk has yet to publicly acknowledge. In February, author and influencer Ashley St. Clair announced on X that she had given birth to a son in August, and that the father was Elon Musk.
"Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father." She tweeted.
"I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause. I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment. For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy, and refrain from invasive reporting."
Shortly after, Brian Glicklich, a representative for St. Clair, shared a statement on X, stating that St. Clair and Musk had been "privately working towards the creation of an agreement about raising their child for some time.
"It is disappointing that a tabloid reporter, who repeatedly ambushed Ashley and her family, made it impossible to complete that process confidentially. We are waiting for Elon to publicly acknowledge his parental role with Ashley, to end unwarranted speculation, and Ashley trusts that Elon intends to finish their agreement quickly in the best interests of the wellbeing and security of the child they share", he added.
A day after the tweet, Musk responded to a tweet from a user named MILO, who shared a screenshot of an old post by St. Clair and wrote that "St. Clair had plotted for half a decade to ensnare" Musk. Musk wrote on X in response: "Whoa".
St. Clair then replied, “Elon, we have been trying to communicate for the past several days, and you have not responded. When are you going to reply to us instead of publicly responding?"
After receiving no response, St. Clair filed a petition with the New York Supreme Court, requesting the court to issue an order requiring Musk to submit to a genetic test to determine if he is the father. "I am not currently married. I did not have sexual intercourse with any other male during the time the child was conceived.”
St. Clair stated in the legal documents that she first met Musk in May 2023 at an interview he did that month with her then-boss, CEO of right-leaning satirical news site Babylon Bee. After the meeting, Musk texted her and suggested they meet up.
According to St. Clair, the baby, born last September, was conceived just days into 2024 while she and Musk were vacationing on the island of St. Barts. At the time, Musk was there with his son X Æ A-Xii, whom he shares with singer Grimes.
As part of her lawsuit, St. Clair included text messages allegedly exchanged with Musk after the child's birth, one of which including a photo of her holding the newborn in the delivery room, to which Musk responded, "All well?" adding, "I look forward to seeing you and him this weekend."
In another exchange, St. Clair sent him a selfie, to which Musk replied: 'Hi cutie.' She then texted him back, saying: 'Hi, see u soon.' to which Musk commented, "I want to knock you up again,"
St. Clair is now suing for sole legal custody of their son, saying that Musk has only met the child three times and has had no involvement in his care and upbringing."
For context, Musk has fathered eight children in the past five years, which is an average of 1.6 children per year. Curious, intrigued, and perhaps a bit anxious, we’ll be watching closely to see who might announce his next child. Stay tuned!