Elon Musk was photographed for the first time with his twins alongside their mother Shivon Zilis, who also works for the mogul at his brain chip company Neuralink.
The image shows Musk sitting cross-legged on a couch with one of the twins, who was 16 months old at the time, on his lap.
The other infant is being held by the 37-year-old Zilis, who is sitting next to Musk, according to Insider.
The photo, taken at Zilis’ home in Austin, Texas, was released by veteran journalist Walter Isaacson, the author of an upcoming biography about Musk.
Isaacson, who has reportedly shadowed Musk for three years for the book, posted the photo on his X account on Wednesday.
Another image posted by Isaacson shows one of the twins standing next to a robot with Musk hovering over the baby.
Isaacson, whose book goes on sale Sept. 12, said Musk wanted to meet him at Zilis’ home last March for a chat that “can only be done in person.”
Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis with their twins @WalterIsaacson / Twitter“He said we should leave our phones in the house while we sat outside, because, he said, someone could use them to monitor our conversation. But he later agreed that I could use what he said about AI in my book,” Isaacson wrote in an excerpt from his biography posted in Time magazine.
“For a moment I was struck by the oddness of the scene,” Isaacson wrote. “We were sitting on a suburban patio by a tranquil backyard swimming pool on a sunny spring day, with two bright-eyed twins learning to toddle, as Musk somberly speculated about the window of opportunity for building a sustainable human colony on Mars before an AI apocalypse destroyed earthly civilization.”
Zilis, a Canadian-born venture capitalist, gave birth to Musk’s eighth and ninth child in November 2021, according to court documents.
Their names have never been made public.
The twins, who were reportedly conceived through in vitro fertilization, were born just weeks before Musk welcomed his second child with Canadian pop star Grimes (aka Claire Boucher), according to court documents.
Zilis told colleagues that she and her 52-year-old billionaire boss never engaged in any sexual relationship or ever romantically involved in any way, according to Reuters.
Elon Musk, 53, is father to nine children — two of which he had with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain chip company Neuralink. REUTERS
Elon Musk is seen with one of his nine children at an event in Miami in May. Formula 1 via Getty Images
Zilis, a Canadian-born venture capitalist, gave birth to Musk’s eighth and ninth child in November 2021, according to court documents. Shivon Zilis
Zilis’ ties to Musk stretch back years, including stints at OpenAI and Tesla. shivon/Twitter
Zilis has reportedly told friends that the babies were conceived via in vitro fertilization. shivon/TwitterMusk also fathered five children — Griffin, Vivian, Jenna, Kai, Saxon, and Damian — that he shares with his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson.
The couple lost their first child, Nevada, who died of sudden infant death syndrome at just 10 weeks old, in 2002.
The photo of Musk, Zilis, and their two children was taken by Walter Isaacson, the author of an upcoming biography about the Tesla mogul. APZilis ties to Musk stretch back to 2016, when she joined OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, as an advisor.
Musk is a co-founder of OpenAI but left the Silicon Valley firm after an acrimonious split with management in 2018.
He hired Zilis, who is considered an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, to work on Tesla’s autopilot technology in 2017.
She took over Neuralink in 2020.
