Everything he is, he owes to me: Elon Musk s father denies bullying him as child
Despite strained relationships with his father, Musk has remained close with his siblings. Musk is the eldest of three; his siblings are Kimbal Musk, 49, and Tosca Musk, 47. Kimbal is passionate about food justice, and has founded three food companies: The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, and Square Roots. He is also a board member of powerful companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and Chipotle. Tosca is a producer, director, and founder of streaming service, Passionflix.
Everything You Need to Know About Elon Musk’s Family
The richest man in the world has an impressive family tree as well.
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CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and (potentially soon-to-be) Twitter, Elon Musk has certainly become a household name. But there’s more to the mogul than just his businesses—including his wild family dynamic. Here’s all you need to know about the children and family of the richest man alive.
Who Is Elon Musk?
Musk, 51, was raised in South Africa. In 1995, he founded the company Zip2, intended to provide online newspapers with maps and business directories. Just four years later, the company was purchased by computer manufacturer Compaq for a whopping $307 million.
The entrepreneur then founded the online banking services company X.com with his brother Kimbal, which later merged with software company Confinity to become PayPal.
Using proceeds from PayPal, Musk spent $100 million founding Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002. His goal was to make more affordable rockets, and the company’s first two rockets, Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, first launched in 2006 and 2010 respectively.
Though Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Musk has become influential to the electric car company. He has been a Tesla board member since 2004, and has served as chief executive officer since 2006.
By April 2022, Musk had purchased enough stock to make him a majority shareholder of the popular social media platform Twitter. He announced a $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, saying he wanted to add new features, make algorithms open source, defeat spam bots, and authenticate all humans. However, after making making strides toward the acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reports that Musk is now seeking to terminate the deal.
Musk has also been involved in plenty of other businesses over the years, which all contributed to his status as the wealthiest person alive.
Who Are Elon Musk’s Parents?
Success doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Musk is the son of Errol Musk, an engineer in South Africa, and Maye Musk, famous model. Musk’s relationship with his father is far from pleasant. The family had some tension after Errol, 75, admitted to fathering a child with stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout, 34. “He was such a terrible human being,” Musk told Rolling Stone during a 2017 interview. “You have no idea.”
Canadian model Maye Musk, 74, has pushed boundaries and promoted confidence throughout her career. She became CoverGirl’s oldest spokesperson at 69, and the oldest woman to be featured on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover at 74. “I was famous until Elon became famous,” she told The New York Times in 2016.
Elon’s parents split in 1979.
Who Are Elon Musk’s Siblings?
Despite strained relationships with his father, Musk has remained close with his siblings. Musk is the eldest of three; his siblings are Kimbal Musk, 49, and Tosca Musk, 47. Kimbal is passionate about food justice, and has founded three food companies: The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, and Square Roots. He is also a board member of powerful companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and Chipotle. Tosca is a producer, director, and founder of streaming service, Passionflix.
How Many Kids Does Elon Musk Have?
A father of nine, Musk’s family tree can get a bit confusing. Get to know the family:
Nevada Alexander Musk
Musk and first wife, Justine Wilson, welcomed their first child in 2002. Nevada tragically passed away at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Wilson described the death in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, writing “Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead.”
Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin Musk
Following Nevada’s death, Musk and Justine Wilson had twins Griffin Musk and Vivian Jenna Wilson via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Vivian petitioned to legally change her name and gender on April 18, 2022, and she no longer wants to be associated with her father. Musk previously has spoken out against using people’s desired pronouns on Twitter, calling them an “esthetic nightmare.”
Kai, Saxon, and Damian Musk
Musk and Wilson turned to IVF again when giving birth to triplet sons Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006. The couple divorced two years after their sons’ birth.
X AE A-XII Musk
Musk began dating Canadian musician Grimes in 2018, and the two welcomed son X AE A-XII in May 2020. Far from traditional, the baby’s name inevitably had the internet buzzing. Grimes explained the meaning on Twitter, noting that “X” stood for “the unknown variable” while Æ, shorthand for “Artificial intelligence,” translated to “love” in many languages.
When questioned about the pronunciation of the unique name, Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan, “I mean it’s just X, the letter X. And then, the Æ is, like, pronounced ‘Ash’. and then, A-12, A-12 is my contribution.” He credited Grimes with the name.
Exa Dark Sideræl Musk
Though they are typically in the limelight, Grimes revealed in a 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the famous couple had given birth to Musk’s first daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021 via surrogate. She said they have nicknamed the daughter “Y.”
She was born just a few months after Grimes and Musk’s public break up. Grimes told Vanity Fair that “Exa” refers to the supercomputing term “exaFLOPS,” and “Dark” alludes to the unknown. Grimes described the name’s third component, Sideræl, as relating to ” the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time.” A second, more lighthearted, significance of the term is to honor Grimes’ favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel.
Twins?
According to court documents recently obtained by Business Insider, the executive had twins with Shivon Zilis, Neuralink director of operations and special projects, in November 2021—shortly before Grimes gave birth to Exa Dark Sideræl Musk The couple reportedly filed a petition for the twins to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name.” The petition was approved in May 2022.
Who Is Elon Musk Co-Parenting With?
Justine Wilson
After knowing each other for nearly a decade, Wilson and Musk got married in January 2000. The two met while attending Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, but it wasn’t love at first sight. Wilson wrote in her post-separation Marie Claire essay that she turned Elon down when he initially pursued her. The couple reconnected after college, and Wilson eventually moved to California to be with the executive. Wilson and Musk share five children together.
Grimes
Musk and Canadian singer Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, debuted their relationship on the red carpet in May 2018. Their rocky relationship seemingly stabilized when Grimes posted about her pregnancy in 2020, though she didn’t confirm that Musk was the father until a Rolling Stone interview two months later.
They gave birth to son X Æ A-12 in May 2020. Musk announced the couple’s split in September 2021, noting in a statement that they “still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms.” The couple continued living together, and welcomed daughter Exa Dark Sideræl Musk via surrogate in March 2022. Grimes told Vanity Fair that she would probably refer to Musk as her “boyfriend,” though the couple broke up again after the article was published.
Shivon Zilis
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any bigger, the Tesla co-founder’s family keeps growing!
According to Insider, Musk had secret twins with his executive, Shivon Zilis, in November 2021. Zilis, 36, started her career at IBM. She then became a founding member of Bloomberg Beta before moving on to work as a project director at Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that Musk founded in 2016. She is currently the director of operations and special projects.
‘Everything he is, he owes to me’: Elon Musk’s father denies bullying him as child
In his latest interview, Elon Musk’s father Errol Musk also disapproved of certain choices made by his son, such as the unconventional name “X Æ A-12” given to one of his children with the Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes.
Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has rebutted allegations in his son’s latest biography that portrayed him as an abusive figure responsible for his son’s challenging childhood in South Africa.
Errol, aged 77, has had a largely distant relationship with Elon, and a recent biography claimed he inflicted lasting damage through his parenting style.
However, in a recent interview, Errol refuted these claims while acknowledging that Elon’s upbringing was anything but typical, recounting an incident when he took his son to a party with nude adults when Elon was just nine years old.
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Also watch | Gravitas: New biography reveals Musk’s traumatic childhood and relationships
“The crowd I was with were very open minded, very free thinking — a wonderful crowd to be with,” Errol told the Daily Mail. “I’d go from the office and Elon would be in his school uniform. At this one party, a well-known man threw towels at everybody after the meal and said, ‘Off with your clothes. We’re getting in the pool.’ I had to take Elon to the library and said, ‘Just sit there’.”
“Within a few minutes everyone was stark naked. It was weird being with a rather elegant socialite who was saying, ‘You can go out with me next Saturday if you want’.”
‘Everything he is, he owes to me,’ says Elon Musk’s father
The senior Musk slammed his son’s latest biography’s description of his fatherhood.
“Everything he is, he owes to me,” he said. “I say that with humility. I did my best. That book is not the truth. It’s fodder for a play. I emailed the author and told him that.”
Errol, a father of eight, which includes a child he had with his step-daughter, left Elon feeling “unsettled,” as documented in Walter Isaacson’s biography.
In his latest interview, Errol further disapproved of certain choices made by Elon, such as the unconventional name “X Æ A-12” given to one of his children with the Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes.
“X is a weird name for a child, completely weird,” Errol said. “I think that Grimes girl is weird, too. The last I heard she was living with a woman, then she’s back with him, then she’s gone again. Now Elon’s on his own. He wants a woman who’s got brains and beauty.”
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Mukul Sharma is a New-Delhi based multimedia journalist covering geopolitical developments in the South Asia region. His exclusive reports for WION on Afghan women’s plight under Taliban rule have been widely read. Deeply interested in the affairs related to contested peace in Afghanistan and Pakistani establishment, Mukul can be found cycling or running more than a few miles in New Delhi on less busy mornings, or reading some correspondent’s reflections of a place they reported from. He posts on X @mukuljrsharma
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