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

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

The business mogul, 52, told Page Six his newest addition wasn’t a “secret” at all, but thought releasing a statement about the birth would have been a little “weird.”

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

The baby, whose name or gender 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 heads Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink.

News of the tech tycoon’s 12th child was first reported in a Bloomberg article published Friday that addressed Musk and his commentary on birth rates.

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

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

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

Grimes and Musk’s first child, a son named X Æ A-Xii, or X, was born in 2020. In March 2022, they announced the birth of a daughter, 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 married 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 a 2018 email to a father who lost his son in a Tesla accident.

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

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 was granted the name and gender change she requested. Their daughter identifies as a trans woman and, in an April court filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, she asked that her name reflect her new gender identity and cut all ties to Musk.

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

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

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

In 2022, the billionaire posted on Twitter that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a far greater danger to civilization than global warming.”

He also echoed a similar sentiment about the drop in birth rates after news broke that he had twins with Shivon Zilis.

“Doing our best to help the underpopulation crisis. Falling birth rates are the greatest danger facing civilization,” he tweeted, dismissing the reports. “I hope you have big families and congratulations to those who already have!”