Elon Musk confirms 12th child as he and Shivon Zilis welcomed new baby earlier this year

Elon Musk has confirmed he welcomed a new baby earlier this year with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, the pair’s third child together and Musk’s 12th offspring.

The business magnate, 52, told Page Six his newest addition was not by any means a “secret,” but thought releasing a statement on the birth would have just been a bit “bizarre.”

“As for ‘secretly fathered,’ that is also false,” he told the outlet. “All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.’”

The baby, whose name or sex has not been revealed, is Musk’s 12th child and was born sometime earlier this year, reports say. Before the birth, Musk already had two children with 38-year-old Zilis, who is the executive of Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink.

The news of the tech businessman’s 12th child was first reported in a Bloomberg article published on Friday that delved into Musk and his commentary on birth rates.

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In July 2022, it was reported that Musk welcomed two children with Zilis. Court documents obtained by Insider revealed Musk and Zilis’ children were born in November 2021 — weeks before Musk and Grimes welcomed their second-born.

Almost two years after the twins were born, it was revealed their names were Strider and Azure.

In his biography Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson also confirmed in September 2023 that Musk and the musician Grimes had a third child, named Techno Mechanius, who goes by Tau.

Grimes’ and Musk’s first child, a boy named X Æ A-Xii, or X, was born in 2020. In March 2022 , they announced the birth of a girl, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, nicknamed Y, who was born in December 2021.

Musk has been married twice before. He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while the pair were studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Musk and Wilson tied the knot in 2000 and welcomed their first child Nevada Alexander Musk two years later.

Tragically, their first-born died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when he was 10 weeks old.

“There is nothing worse than losing a child,” Musk said in an email in 2018 to a father who lost his son in a Tesla crash.

“My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat,” he also wrote on X in 2022.

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Wilson and Musk went on to have a set of twins, Griffin and Vivian, in 2004 and triplets, Kai, Saxon, and Damian Musk, in 2006.

In June 2023, it was reported that Musk and Wilson’s teenage daughter had been granted the name and gender change that she requested. Their daughter identifies as a trans woman and, in an April court filing with the Los Angeles County Superior court, she requested to have her name reflect her new gender identity and to sever all ties with Musk.

“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” the paperwork filed in Santa Monica read.

At the time, Wilson said she was “proud” of her daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson for taking the decision to cut ties with Musk.

Musk, who now has fathered a total of 12 children, has long spoken out about his belief that declining birth rates could lead to the collapse of civilization.

In 2022, the billionaire tweeted that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilisation than global warming.”

He also echoed a similar sentiment about declining birth rates after news broke that he fathered twins with Shivon Zilis.

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