Musk, who posted a tweet on May 24 saying that “the birth rate in the United States has been below the minimum sustainable levels for ~ 50 years” and set it at the top of his Twitter account of more than 100 million followers, quietly fathered children with Shivon Zilis. who works for Musk at the company that hopes to develop an implantable computer chip for the human brain, according to documents obtained by Business Insider.
The point of sale obtained court documents related to the change of the children’s legal names to incorporate the surname Musk and Zilis as part of the second names. CNN Business was unable to independently confirm the contents of the documents, but a Travis, Texas County court file obtained by CNN Business indicated that the name change request was initially filed in April 2022 and granted in early May, coinciding with the dates of the documents published by Business Insider. These documents contain the seal of the court as well as the signature of Musk, who lists him as father and Zilis as mother.
Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to representatives from Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink.
Zilis ’professional ties with Musk date back at least to April 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile, when she became an OpenAI consultant. Musk is one of the co-founders of OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab with the stated mission of “ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” In August 2020, Musk held a live event to showcase the progress of Neuralink technology, which he had implanted in a pig. Nearly a year later, Neuralink claimed the monkeys could play Pong after the company’s chips had been inserted into their brains. But more recently, Neuralink has had to address concerns about its testing practices, denying allegations of animal cruelty and confirming earlier this year that monkeys have died as part of the tests. According to LinkedIn from Zilis, he worked for both Tesla and Neuralink from May 2017; and currently works as Director of Operations and Special Projects at Neuralink. In 2020, Zilis became a member of the OpenAI board. Prior to working for Musk-led companies, Zilis worked for a venture capital fund at Bloomberg (which placed her on Forbes ’30 under 30 list for venture capital in 2015), as well as for IBM. He has also been a member of the boards of directors of at least two other organizations related to artificial intelligence. Zilis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This is the second set of twins that Musk is believed to have fathered. Musk and his first wife, Justine, had twins in 2004 before welcoming three twins two years later. (The two, who married between 2000 and 2008, lost their first child; Justine, an author, wrote about what it was like to marry and divorce Musk for Marie Claire magazine in 2010. ) Musk had two later. children with musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes. Her second child was born in December 2021 through a surrogate.
– CNN’s Rachel Metz contributed to the reports