Last week, we reported that Elon Musk has 11 children, which seemed like a lot at the time. Unfortunately, that number appears to be incorrect. In fact, he has yet another previously unreported kid, according to a report published Friday by Bloomberg. The total number of kids (that we know of) now appears to be 12.
Bloomberg’s report, which delves deeper into Musk’s recent promulgation of pronatalist ideas, notes that the tech billionaire has had at least three children with an executive at his neuroscience startup Neuralink. Until this week, only two of those children were known to the public. The Bloomberg report attempts to chart Musk’s paternal “activity,” diagramming it like so:
He’s fathered at least 12 children, six of them in the past five years—three with the musician Grimes and three with Neuralink Corp.’s director of special projects, Shivon Zilis, including one who hasn’t been known to the public until now. That child was born earlier this year, according to people familiar with the matter, who would only discuss it on condition of anonymity. Zilis declined to comment, and Musk didn’t respond to inquiries.
At this point, Musk is akin to some sort of medieval king whose inability to keep it in his pants has resulted in an endless spread of heirs and baby mommas throughout his fiefdom. Seriously, how many offspring does this dude actually have? The Bloomberg piece notably says that the tech billionaire has sired “at least 12 children” (emphasis mine), which doesn’t make it a particularly definitive number.
Musk has been telling anybody who will listen that they should have lots of children to fight the global “baby bust.” This is, of course, sort of an easy thing to tell people when you don’t have to worry about the cost of childcare because you’re the richest guy (or, sometimes, the second richest guy) on Earth.
Gizmodo reached out to Neuralink and Musk for comment and will update this story if they provide a definitive number of baby Elons running around.
