On a leafy residential street in Austin, Texas, Elon Musk is in the process of creating what the New York Times calls an “unusual family compound,” which he reportedly hopes could one day be inhabited by his 11 known children and their three mothers.
But it turns out that at least two of these “mothers” — his first wife, Justine Musk, and his ex-partner, Claire Boucher, otherwise known as the musician Grimes — have shown no interest in the compound, at least for the time being, according to the New York Times.
Furthermore, at least one of Musk’s older children is estranged from him — his 20-year-old daughter Vivian Wilson, who has publicly denounced his patriarchal ambitions by declaring, “You are no family man.”
2018 photo: Grimes and Elon Musk attend The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
In a story published Tuesday, the New York Times delves into the pronatalist ambitions of the world’s richest man and of Donald Trump’s “most important campaign backer.” Pronatalists, from both the Christian right and Silicon Valley, believe that people should have as many children as possible, although they differ on the means of reproduction.
Eschewing traditional marriage, Musk has reportedly offered to donate his sperm to various women for IVF purposes, including to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan, the Times said. Musk wants to keep fathering children and contribute to the world’s population growth.
People close to Musk also said he was “only half joking” when he offered to impregnate Taylor Swift in September. The offer came in a post on his X social media platform after the pop star voiced her support for Kamala Harris and signed her endorsement, “Childless Cat Lady.”
In certain ways, Musk’s existential anxieties about declining population rates in some developed countries — although the world’s population is expected to grow by 2 billion in the next 60 years — are reflected in the compound he’s created out of two properties in the upscale Austin neighborhood, according to the Times.
His $35 million compound consists of one 14,400-square-foot Tuscan-style mansion, as well as a second, six-bedroom mansion. Musk has reportedly told people close to him that he envisions two of his children’s mothers, Grimes and Shivon Zilis, occupying the adjoining properties. That way, the six young children he’s had with the two women could be part of one another’s lives, and Musk could schedule time between the two households.
Musk would also be happy to make room at his compound for his first wife, author Justine Musk, with whom he has five children, all in their late teens or older, the Times said. But in a 2010 essay for Elle , Justine Musk described herself as “estranged” from her ex-husband, while saying he once insisted that he needed to be “the alpha” in their marriage.
Meanwhile, Grimes has moved away from Austin and is locked in a protracted legal fight with the billionaire over custody of their three young children, at least one of whom was born via surrogacy. She’s steering “clear” of the compound, the Times reported.
Elon Musk jumps on the stage as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Tensions between Grimes and Musk seemed to have flared over his relationship with Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, Musk’s brain technology start-up. In 2021, without Grimes’ knowledge, Musk donated sperm to Zilis, who became pregnant with twins through IVF, three people familiar with the couple told the Times. That same year, Musk and Grimes were expecting a second child, also conceived via IVF but carried by a surrogate.
The two women, who had been friends, were also unknowingly at the same Austin hospital around the same time, according to the biography of Musk by author Walter Isaacson. The Times said that Zilis gave birth to twins in late 2021, weeks before Grimes’ second child was born. The musician only learned that Musk had fathered Zilis’ children a month after they were born.
Such reports would seem to give credence to the allegation by Vivian Wilson that her father is “not a family man,” but “a serial adulterer.”
Wilson spoke out against Musk in August after he gave an interview with the controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Musk blamed his estrangement from his daughter, who is transgender, on her being “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
By the summer, Musk had become an outspoken opponent of transgender rights and gender-affirming care, as he embraced aspects of the right-wing agenda, leading to him declaring his enthusiastic support for Trump in July.
On Threads , Wilson let it be known that she was alive and well and not willing to let her father continue “lying about her own children.”
Wilson denounced his South African-born father for holding himself up as some exemplar of family values or of equality and progress. “You are not a Christian, as far as I’m aware you’ve never stepped foot in a church. You are not some ‘bastion for equality/progress,’” she said.
Wilson also challenged Musk’s claim that he is saving the planet, either by starting his electric car company or by launching SpaceX, to colonize Mars in case the Earth one day becomes uninhabitable.
As for Musk’s pronatalist “birth rate stuff,” Wilson said she wouldn’t touch that “weird… breeder (expletive) with a 10-foot pole.”
“You single-handedly disillusioned me with how gullible we are as a species because somehow people keep believing you for reasons that continue to evade me,” Wilson concluded.
