Google co-founder leaves Elon Musk's companies after infidelity

Elon Musk, last December in Berlin.

In addition to an imprecise number of children, an affair with the ex-wife of Johnny Depp in the middle of the legal process of both and an almost gothic-style couple, the tycoon Elon Musk wreaks havoc on other relationships, as if his own were not enough.

As reported this Sunday by

, the bible of the American economic press, with a note halfway between gossip and the balance of corporate results, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX caused the breakup of the couple formed by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan, with whom the world's richest man had an affair in early December in Miami.

Brin, who in 2008, coinciding with the Great Recession, invested half a million dollars in the Tesla project, filed for separation in January after three years of marriage and a child together, and later ordered his advisers to divest until last penny in Musk's companies, according to the business daily.

The alleged infidelity has dynamited the friendship between the two businessmen, which dates back to ancient times.

In 2015, Musk gave his friend one of the first electric cars made by Tesla.

The amount of Brin's personal investments in Musk's companies, whose fortune is valued at $242 billion, is unknown.

Brin is seven points below his rival on the world's wealthiest list, the eighth richest thanks to a net worth of $94.6 billion.

It is also unknown whether the disinvestment has taken place totally or partially.

Musk is headline meat.

Not only because of its noisy business performance, with recurring controversies about the safety of its cars, or as the announced and then canceled purchase of Twitter demonstrates;

or for the dust raised on the social network, defending freedom of expression, including the return of the account to Donald Trump, while betting on the Republican party.

His private life is a treasure trove of news and this

with Shanahan, the latest in a series of very juicy revelations for the pink press… and the salmon-colored press.

Earlier this year it emerged that in November he had fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, a senior executive at his artificial intelligence company Neuralink.

The birth of the twins took place a few weeks before the arrival in the world of his second child with the pop star Grimes, a girl named Y (the eldest son is called X, short for X AE A-2).

The self-centered tycoon took the parental moonlighting humorously, tweeting: “Doing everything we can to help the depopulation crisis.”

Musk has nine (acknowledged) children in total: five with his first wife (the three youngest, born in 2006);

the twins and the two offspring with Grimes, from whom he separated months ago.

With Amber Heard, ex-wife of Johnny Depp, he had a relationship when the actor and she had already divorced, but the affair was used against the actress in the stormy and mediatic defamation trial, in which Heard was torn to pieces by the opinion public.

Musk also hangs over the opprobrium of sexual harassment.

According to the

portal , his space travel company SpaceX paid a stewardess 250,000 for her silence about the alleged sexual harassment of her boss in 2016. Musk called the worker's accusations "totally false" and said they were intended to interfere in his Twitter purchase operation, a vaudeville mess that the tycoon himself feeds without the need for third parties.

Musk's dalliance with Shanahan occurred in December during the Art Basel fair in Miami, after which Musk took advantage of another event to apologize to Brin on his knees, according to the

, which highlights the infidelity on its cover.

Brin and Shanahan are negotiating the terms of her divorce and she aspires to achieve a billion dollars, the newspaper emphasizes, despite the existence of a prenuptial agreement whose clauses are, at the moment, a secret.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América

and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region