Shivon Zilis and Elon Musk with their twins.Photo:Walter Isaacson/Twitter
Walter Isaacson/Twitter
Elon Musk“wants smart people to have kids,” according to a new biography about the billionaire.
“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to do this,” Zilis said in the book. Although Zillis initially planned on using an anonymous sperm donor, Musk later suggested that he could be the donor, which she agreed to.
“I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children,” Zilis said in the book.
Zilis welcomed twins Strider and Azure via in vitro fertilization around the same time Musk and exGrimes— whose real name is Claire Boucher — were expecting their second child, according to the book.
In addition to Strider and Azure, Musk shares three children with Grimes and is also dad to 18-year-old twinsVivian Jenna Wilsonand Griffin, along with triplets Kai, Damian and Sax, who were born in 2006, with his first wife,Justine Wilson. The two had another son, Nevada, who died at 10 weeks.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
As noted in Isaacson’s book, Musk has long been concerned about the ongoing decline in birth rates across the globe.
The Tesla CEO has expressed his concerns in multiple posts on Twitter, now known as X. In July 2022,he claimedhe was “doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.”
Muskreiterated his concernson the social media platform more than a month-and-a-half later. “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” he suggested.
Most recently, Musk welcomed his third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus, with his ex Grimes, according toThe New York Times’review of Isaacson’s book.
The two are also parents toson X Æ A-12, whose name waslater changed to X Æ A-Xiifollowing his 2020 birth and is nicknamed “X,” and a daughter born via surrogate in December 2021 namedExa Dark Sideræl.
Although Musk is a proud father, in an interview withthe Wall Street Journal’s CEO Councilin May, he said he believes it would be"a mistake" to simply hand over his companies to his children.
“I am definitely not of the school of automatically giving my kids some shares of the companies, even if they have no interest or inclination or ability to manage the company,” he said at the time.
source: people.com
