Elon Musk is a tech entrepreneur, space pioneer, one-time “Saturday Night Live” host and controversial figure.
He’s also fathered 11 children with three different women.
The X owner shares three kids with the music artist Grimes, who filed a petition in court in October 2023 to establish parental rights after she broke up with Musk.
Author Walter Isaacson wrote a biography about Musk that came out in the fall of 2023 in which he explored the SpaceX founder's personal life and family. Isaacson also penned a Time magazine cover story last September about Musk that revealed the names of the businessman’s youngest twins, Strider and Azure, whom he shares with Shivon Zilis.
A few days after that article came out, Grimes said on Sept. 10 that she and Musk had welcomed a third child. That announcement came after a New York Times review of Isaacson’s book revealed the baby had been born.
“He believes that people should have many more children,” Isaacson said while appearing on TODAY on Sept. 11, 2023. “He wants to have a lot of children.”
Here’s a glimpse at each of Elon Musk’s 11 kids.
Strider and Azure
Musk shares twins Strider and Azure with Zilis, 38, an AI specialist and executive at Neuralink, a company that Musk founded. Isaacson describes her as Musk's "intellectual companion on artificial intelligence since the founding of OpenAI eight years earlier."
In the Time story, Isaacson also shared a photo of the twins, who were born in November 2021, and one with Musk's son with the singer Grimes.
On Sept. 8, 2023, Zilis shared an adorable video on X, formerly known as Twitter, of her twins running around, with one of them yelling, “I love you.”
X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno
Elon Musk and singer Grimes welcomed a baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk with the help of a surrogate in December 2022. Grimes, whose birth name is Claire Elise Boucher, told Vanity Fair the baby’s name is pronounced “sigh-deer-ee-el,” but nicknamed Y.
Grimes and Musk had a son in May 2021. Originally named X Æ A-12, the child, whom they call X, had to have his name officially changed to X Æ A-Xii in order to be in line with California laws about birth certificates.
The child’s name is pronounced “X Ash A Twelve,” Musk said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast shortly after his birth.
“First of all, my partner’s the one that mostly came up with the name,” he said. “It’s just X, the letter X, and then the ‘Æ’ is pronounced, ‘Ash,’ and then, ‘A-12’ is my contribution.”
Grimes later confirmed that she and Musk had a third child, named Techno. In a lengthy tweet, in which she explained a since-deleted post directed at Zilis and Musk about their twins, she wrote, in part, “I wish I could show u how cute little Techno is but my priority rn is keeping my babies out of the public eye.”
Adding, “Plz respect that at this time.”
Griffin, Xavier and Nevada
The business mogul and his first wife, Justine Wilson, had twin boys, Griffin and Xavier, in 2004. That came after the couple had a son named Nevada in 2002 who died from sudden infant death syndrome as an infant.
“My firstborn son died in my arms,” Musk wrote in an email exchange reported by Business Insider earlier this year. “I felt his heartbeat.”
Kai, Saxon and Damian Musk
After having twins, Musk and Wilson had triplets — all boys — in 2006. Musk and Wilson divorced in 2008.
Musk also has a colorful romantic history. After he divorced Wilson, he married actor Tallulah Riley in 2010. They divorced in 2012, married again in 2013, then divorced a second time in 2016.
He and Grimes split in September 2021, only to get back together.
“There’s no real word for it,” she told Vanity Fair. “I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. 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 also said she and Musk hoped to have more kids.
“We’ve always wanted at least three or four,” she told Vanity Fair.
But on March 10, after the article was released, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up, again.