Elon Musk and son X Æ A-12 on stage TIME Person of the Year on December 13, 2021 in New York City.
Getty Images for TIME
Days after a report that Elon Musk fathered children with a woman who worked for him at Tesla and who is currently a top executive at his brain-implant startup, the world’s wealthiest man said he intends to improve childcare benefits for employees at his many companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.
“Kids are worth it if at all possible. I’m planning to increase childcare benefits at my companies significantly,” Musk tweeted on Friday. “Also, Musk Foundation plans to donate directly to families. Hopefully, details to be announced next month.”
His remarks follow a report by Business Insider revealing that Musk fathered twins born to Shivon Zilis in 2021–around the same time he had a daughter with former girlfriend Claire Boucher, better known as the singer Grimes, using a surrogate mother. (Grimes gave birth to a son fathered by Musk in 2020.) The billionaire entrepreneur tacitly confirmed the Insider story tweeting this week that he was doing his “best to help the underpopulation crisis.”
Tesla provides limited details of its current childcare benefits on the company website and didn’t respond to a request for comment on that matter. In its business ethics guidelines, the company says employees are entitled to “equal opportunities” across numerous circumstances that include “pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation, or related medical conditions).”
Musk has a total of nine children, including five with his first wife, Justine Musk, two with Grimes and twins with Zilis. A tenth child, his first with Justine, died of sudden infant death syndrome in 2002. In addition to electric-car maker Tesla and SpaceX, Musk founded and has funded the Boring Co. and Neuralink, where Zilis is director of operations and special projects. Previously, she was a project director with Tesla’s AI team until 2019.
Though it’s unclear how much time Musk spends with his ever-growing brood, he’s long been known to encourage employees at Tesla and SpaceX to have children.
Elon Musk via Twitter
Recently, he’s also become fixated on what he says is the looming threat of a declining birthrate, raising the point frequently in public appearances. Underscoring that, he’s pinned a Wall Street Journal chart showing the steep drop in the U.S. fertility rate over the past several decades. The graphic shows that American women now have an average of just over 1.5 children, down from about 3.75 children in 1960 and below a “replacement” rate of 2.1 children to ensure population stability.
“Past two years have been a demographic disaster,” Musk said in a June 13 tweet.
