Elon Musk secretly fathered twins with an executive at one of his companies

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, secretly became a father again when 36-year-old Shivon Zilis, an executive with the Musk-owned company Neuralink, gave birth to twins in November 2021. According to court documents obtained by

, in April 2022 Musk and Zilis submitted name change requests to a court in Austin (Texas, USA), where the twins were born.

A judge approved their request in May to give the newborns their father's last name and have their mother's last name as part of their middle names.

The twins were born just weeks before Elon Musk and the singer/songwriter known professionally as Grimes announced the birth of their second daughter, Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, via a surrogate.

All this came just a few months after Elon Musk told

that he and Grimes were “semi-separated” but committed to jointly raising their first child, X Æ A-12.

Musk, an outspoken advocate of bringing more children into the world, is the acknowledged father of nine children.

The world's richest person, Musk has an estimated fortune of $277.3 billion.

He is the CEO of four of his companies: Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer;

SpaceX, a spacecraft manufacturer;

The Boring Company, a tunneling company;

and Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–machine interfaces, where Shivon Zilis works.

describes Zilis as “the rising star in Musk's empire.”

Born in Markham, Ontario (Canada), Zilis earned a bachelor's degree in economics and philosophy in 2008 from prestigious Yale University.

She began her career at tech giant IBM before joining venture capital firm Bloomberg Beta, where she led data-driven investment efforts.

In 2015, the 28-year-old Zilis was named to

magazine's “30 Under 30″ list of young talent in the venture capital category.

Elon Musk and Grimes at the 2018 Met gala in New York.

Kevin Mazur/MG18 (Getty Images for The Met Museum/)

Zilis and Musk met at OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence research company founded by Musk.

Zilis was appointed to Open AI's board of directors, becoming the youngest person to hold this position at the company.

In 2017, Zilis started working at Tesla as an Autopilot project manager.

She is currently director of operations and special projects at Neuralink.

According to

, Zilis and Musk share the same intellectual passion for “space travel, transportation and, above all, artificial intelligence.”

They also share a sense of humor, and like to “tweet puns about artificial intelligence and tongue-in-cheek references to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency – Dogecoin.”

Zilis frequently defends Musk's controversial opinions on social media.

The news of his two new children comes just weeks after Vivian Jenna Wilson, the oldest of Musk's five children with his first wife, writer Justine Musk, petitioned a Los Angeles court to have her father's last name legally removed.

“I do not wish to be related to my biological father in any way,” said the young woman.

Wilson, who recently turned 18, requested the name change as well as a new birth certificate reflecting her new gender identity.