Elon Musk's whirlwind love life and 11 kids with unusual names
Elon Musk is known for being the richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $225.3 billion (£185 billion), and one day all of that wealth is going to be passed down to his kids. The businessman, who has owned social media site X - previously known as Twitter - for one year today, welcomed his 11th child this month.
The latest addition to his family means Elon now has over a dozen children with three different women, including Canadian author Justine Musk, singer Grimes and employee Shivron Zilis. The father-of-11 has also dated some very famous faces in the spotlight over the years, including actresses Amber Heard and Talulah Riley.
Justine Musk
Justine Musk was Elon's college sweetheart and his first wife. The pair met while at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, in the nineties and welcomed their first son Nevada in 2002, two years after marrying. Sadly, Nevada tragically died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when he was just 10 weeks old. "There is nothing worse than losing a child," Elon said at the time. "My firstborn son died in my arms. I felt his heartbeat."
The couple went on to have five more children together; a set of twins in 2004 and a set of triplets in 2006. But their relationship didn't last and they divorced in 2008. In a piece for Marie Claire in 2010, Justine opened up about their marriage claiming that she was just a "starter wife" for Elon. "It was a dream lifestyle, privileged and surreal," she said. "But the whirlwind of glitter couldn't disguise a growing void at the core. Elon was obsessed with his work."
Talulah Riley
Elon started dating actress Talulah Riley and proposed just six weeks after filing for divorce from Justine. The pair went on to marry in 2010. Their marriage only lasted two years before they divorced in 2012, but the couple reconciled and married for the second time in 2013. However, in 2016 their marriage ended for good and they got their second divorce.
Bird charity banned from Twitter for repeatedly posting woodcock photosDespite divorcing him twice, Talulah is still on good terms with Elon. Speaking about what their marriage was like, she told The Independent: "Elon was great. He had me alongside for all of that. So it wasn't like I was stuck in a mansion in Bel Air like a trophy wife, which would not have been fun. I did, of course, witness that for others. But luckily, that was not my fate."
Amber Heard
Following his final split from Riley, Elon went on to date Aquaman actress Amber Heard in 2016, shortly after her divorce from Johnny Depp. But in his defamation lawsuit in 2019, Johnny accused Amber of cheating on him with Elon, claiming the pair actually started their relationship in March 2016, a month after he and Amber married.
In 2020, it was also claimed in legal depositions that Elon had had a three-way hook-up with Amber Heard and model Cara Delevingne. Despite the allegations, Elon has denied the threesome and also denied that Amber had an affair with him. He told Page Six: "Cara and I are friends, but we've never been intimate. She would confirm this. Also, I wish to confirm again that Amber and I only started going out about a month after her divorce filing. I don't think I was ever even in the vicinity of Amber during their marriage!" Amber and Elon's relationship didn't last very long, they split after less than a year in 2017 due to their busy work schedules.
Grimes
In April 2018, Elon began dating singer Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher. The pair announced they welcomed their first son in May 2020, who they famously named X Æ A-12, but they had to change it to X Æ A-Xii. A year later, the pair confirmed they had separated but said they wanted to continue having children together, with Grimes telling Vanity Fair they "wanted at least three or four".
Speaking about their split on social media at the time, she wrote: "Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article haha, but he's my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now." Elon told Page Six: "We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms."
Announcing the secret birth of their daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, who they call Y, to Vanity Fair in March 2022, Grimes confirmed that she was back together with Elon as she referred to him as her "boyfriend". But just hours after the story was published, Grimes confirmed that they had split once again. Then in September 2023, it was revealed they had welcomed a third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus, who Elon calls Tau.
Shivon Zilis
In July 2022, news broke that Elon had secretly fathered twins with a woman called Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. In November 2021, she and Elon welcomed twins together, just weeks before he welcomed his second child with Grimes. It's not known what type of relationship Elon has with Shivon, but their secret children were revealed after court documents filed in April showed that they had requested for the twins to have their father's last name.