Elon Musk responds to news about secret twins: ‘Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis’

Elon Musk has secretly fathered twins with Shivon Zilis – an executive at his neurotechnology firm Neuralink – it was reported on Wednesday 6 July.

According to court documents obtained by Business Insider, the children were born in November 2021, just weeks before the Tesla CEO welcomed his second child via surrogate with his on-again off-again partner Grimes.

Elon Musk, 51, is now a father to a total of nine children. The billionaire shares five children with ex-wife Justine Wilson – one set of 18-year-old twins and one set of 16-year-old triplets. Musk also has two children with Canadian musician Grimes (real name Claire Boucher) – son X AE A-XII and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl – and two children with Zilis.

Since the report was published that Musk had fathered two more children, a Twitter thread posted by the SpaceX founder in which he discussed declining birth rates in the US has received renewed attention.

On 24 May, Musk tweeted a graphic from the Wall Street Journal which showed that the total fertility rate in the US has remained below the “replacement level” for the last 50 years.

“USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years,” he tweeted, before pinning the tweet to his profile.

“Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have,” he added. “I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.”

Three weeks later, Musk posted another tweet to the thread, this time noting his own contribution to the country’s population. “Past two years have been a demographic disaster,” he said. “I mean, I’m doing my part haha”.

In another tweet, he added: “Civilization sterilised”.

Following reports that he fathered twins with 36-year-old Zilis, Musk addressed the news on 7 June in a string of tweets, echoing a similar sentiment about declining birth rates from his previous thread.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” he said. “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”

Musk’s previous Twitter thread has received hundreds of new replies since it was reported that he fathered twins with 36-year-old Zilis.

“Timely tweet,” said writer Kirsten Korosec.

“Man. He wasn’t kidding…” tweeted another user.

“This tweet has renewed perspective now,” one person said.

“The one thing this man is true to his word about,” another Twitter user wrote.

Court documents show that Musk and Zilis filed a petition in April to change the twins’ name to “have their father’s last name” and contain part of their mother’s last name. A Texas court approved the request in May. The documents also show the pair listed the same home address in Austin, Texas, where Tesla is based.

Zilis, a Yale-educated artificial intelligence specialist, is currently the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a Musk-led firm which designs computer implants to allow people’s brains to control electronic devices.