Elon Musk’s Wives, Women, and Kids: A Deep Dive Into His Long and Messy Relationship History

By examining Musk’s complicated relationship history (he’s been married three times and reportedly has 14 known kids with four different women), perhaps we can understand a little more about what’s driving him.

Many are obsessed with the real-life soap opera of Elon Musk’s wives, partners, and their collective children—from his latest baby-mama drama to his tumultuous relationship with singer Grimes (mother of three of the reported 14 children of his we know about, including their son X).

But Musk’s connections with the six women he’s allegedly had pivotal relationships with over the past 25 years may offer some deeper truths about the man who has swiftly become one of the most powerful in the US government.

The tech billionaire turned Donald Trump confidante—and a vocal pro-natalist—is rapidly accruing children at a time when it’s becoming increasingly dangerous to be pregnant in America, especially in Texas where he lives. It’s outrageously expensive to raise a child, yet Musk, the world’s richest man, seems to delight in the excess of an ever-expanding brood.

Then, there’s the cultural and political movements he is a part of. Musk has become one of Trump’s closest allies and advisers, and currently holds a tremendous amount of power within the federal government, which naturally leads us to wonder who he exactly is. In this way, his romantic life can be informative.

The 53-year-old has a tumultuous relationship history with women, some of whom have spoken out about the problems in their relationships. According to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson, most of his romances involve “psychological turmoil.

Therefore, it doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say that by examining Musk’s relationship history (he’s been married to two women and reportedly has 14 known kids with four different women), perhaps we can understand a little more about what’s driving the man who seems to currently be holding much of the federal workforce, and the American public by proxy, in the palms of his hands.

Here’s a brief synopsis of each woman, their relationship with Musk, the kids they produced, and where they are now.

Elon Musk stands beside a rocket on March 19, 2004.Paul Harris/Getty Images

Justine Musk: Married from 2000–2008, six children

Justine Wilson, the first of Elon Musk’s wives, met the future billionaire in the early 1990s when she was a freshman and he was a sophomore at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She was an aspiring writer from a small town, and wrote in a 2010 essay titled “I Was a Starter Wife” that she was initially put off by Musk’s pursuit of her. “He’s not a man who takes no for an answer,” she wrote, recalling how Musk showed up with ice cream after she blew off a date with him.

The pair kept in touch sporadically and in the late 1990s, when Musk was living in Silicon Valley, they began dating seriously and moved in together. They made plans to get married in 2000, but it was rocky. Isaacson reported in his book Elon Musk that Justine said Musk would challenge her and she’d always “fight back.”

“There is a combative element to him. I don’t think you can be in a relationship with Elon and not argue,” she said.

However, Justine soon felt “warning signs,” she wrote in her essay. She said Musk told her at their wedding reception that he was the “alpha” in their relationship, and she began to feel as if she was being sidelined. Musk would criticize her judgement, often overruling her, a fact she attributed in her essay to his “male-dominated upbringing” in South Africa. She recalled that he would often tell her that if she was his employee, he would fire her.

In 2002, Musk and Justine had their first child, a son named Nevada. When the baby was 10 weeks old, the family traveled with their nanny to a wedding. During the ceremony, the nanny went to check on Nevada, who was asleep on his back, and found he had stopped breathing, likely due to SIDS, Isaacson reported. The baby died three days later.

Justine wrote in the essay that Musk accused her of being “emotionally manipulative” when she expressed her grief openly. The couple would go on to have five more kids through IVF: twins Vivian and Griffin in 2004 and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006.

In 2008, Justine wrote, she had a wake-up call. She was involved in a car accident and got sudden clarity: She had become “a trophy wife—and I sucked at it.” They tried counseling, but eventually, she wrote, Musk offered her an ultimatum: Accept the marriage as is, or it’s over. They decided to divorce and embarked on a lengthy legal battle that took several years to untangle.

On her blog, Justine frequently wrote about how powerless she felt in her relationship with her ex, saying, “Nothing had my name on it—not the house we bought together, not the car I drove, and.… I told myself I was fine with it. I didn’t want to be spoiled or ungrateful.” She also wrote about how she clashed with Musk on his expectations for their sons. In a blog post, she wrote about her frustration that once her twins turned seven, they were no longer able to bring stuffed animals to their dad’s.

“I don’t want to see any child shoehorned into a definition of masculinity that forbids him to flourish as himself,” she wrote on her blog, which she maintained frequently until 2013.

At age 16, the couple’s daughter Vivian transitioned and has become estranged from her dad, which Isaacson attributed to Vivian’s alleged Marxist political beliefs. In a TikTok posted February 16, Vivian responded to a question about her mom by saying that she was a published author of “dark urban supernatural fiction” and “that should explain a lot.”

Talulah Riley: Married from 2010–2012 and 2014–2016, no children
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Elon Musk and Talulah Riley attend The Huffington Post pre-inaugural ball at the Newseum on January 19, 2009. Paul Morigi
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Musk met then 22-year-old British actor Talulah Riley in July 2008, just a few weeks after he and Justine decided to divorce, at a London nightclub. Riley told Daily Mail in a 2009 profile that their meeting was “serendipitous.”

“It wasn’t love at first sight for me, but within three days I knew I loved him, and we’ll marry next year,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to marry young, and the age difference just isn’t an issue.”

According to Isaacson’s book, Musk proposed within weeks—though the couple decided they should wait a “couple of years” before getting married. The relationship soon became a hot topic in the tabloids, prompting Musk to write an op-ed denying he had cheated on Justine with Riley, saying they met after he split from his wife.

Riley told Isaacson that she soon learned more about Musk’s hot temper and trauma, and that he told her “being with me can be difficult, this will be a hard path.” She stuck by him, and they got married at an English cathedral in September 2010. However, Isaacson wrote, she was suitably worried about their relationship to decide she didn’t want kids with him.

Soon, the marriage began to fall apart. Isaacson wrote that Riley felt isolated by living in Los Angeles with Musk and that she had given up her own career, while he frequently abandoned her for his. She filed for divorce in 2012, but as the author wrote, the couple started kissing in court during the proceedings.

“They went through with the divorce, but she ended up moving back in with him,” he wrote.

Musk and Riley remarried in 2013 in their dining room, but the reconciliation was short-lived, Issacson wrote. Riley began to feel frustrated by the same problems she had before, and when she turned 30, decided to call it and go home to England. They divorced again in 2016, and Riley eventually married fellow actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster in 2024. The couple was featured that year in a profile for UK newspaper The Times, in which they discussed living on a farm commune (“I’m mad for raw milk,” Riley said).

According to Isaacson, though, Riley told Musk she’d always be there for him, saying: “You’re my Mr. Rochester…And if Thornfield Hall burns down and you are blind, I’ll come to you and take care of you.”

Amber Heard: 2016–2017, no children
Before actor Amber Heard was tried in the court of public opinion over her relationship with ex-husband Johnny Depp, she had a brief and tumultuous relationship with Musk. Both were fresh off recent divorces (Heard from Depp and Musk from Riley).

According to Isaacson, the couple, who had briefly met before, reconnected as both were splitting up with their exes at the 2016 Met Gala. They embarked on a bumpy relationship that lasted less than two years, but it left lasting impacts on Musk.

“The most agonizing [relationship] of them all was with the actress Amber Heard, who drew him into a dark vortex that lasted more than a year and produced a deep-seated pain that lingers to this day,” he wrote. The couple, he reported, would argue all night and Musk would be unable to get up in the morning. Their flame eventually fizzled for good, though Heard told Isaacson she loved Musk.

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“I’m just a fool for love,” Musk told the author, when asked why he often found himself in volatile couplings. “I am often a fool, but especially for love.”

Grimes (Claire Boucher): 2018–?, three children
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Musk and Grimes attend the Met Gala on May 7, 2018. Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Musk first met Grimes, an experimental musician, over Twitter in 2015, according to Isaacson. Their debut at the Met Gala became a huge story, with pop-culture aficionados wondering how the odd pair made it work.

In May 2020, Grimes gave birth to their first child: X Æ A-12 or “X.” According to Isaacson, the couple conceived X via IVF and had planned to have a girl, but the embryo that got implanted was a boy.

Isaacson wrote that X and Musk had a special relationship from day one, with the baby having a calming personality that made Musk “crave his presence.” Even though the couple was on the rocks, they decided to have another child via surrogate in 2021, a daughter this time, Exa Dark Sideræl or “Y.”

According to Isaacson, Grimes soon learned, along with the rest of the world, that Musk had fathered twins with his employee and their mutual friend Shivon Zilis. She was furious, and the betrayal was compounded by the fact that they were about to welcome a third child, another son they’d name Techno Mechanicus or “Tau,” via a surrogate in June 2022. (In September 2023, Grimes wrote she had spoken with Zilis at length, and the two had mended fences.)

In 2023, relations between the couple broke down. Grimes sued Musk for parental rights, and the two launched into a lengthy custody dispute. Grimes has written online that the battle has taken a toll.

“The threat of losing ur kids while going bankrupt fighting for them is not very conducive to creative thoughts,” she wrote on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter) at the end of last year. “I just slept and cried every minute I wasn’t explicitly fighting for my kids during that year.”

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Grimes has also spoken out against Musk bringing X with him in the public eye. After X went viral for acting silly during a presidential press conference, Grimes wrote on X (a.k.a. Twitter) that she hadn’t known her son would be there and that she didn’t want him exposed to the public. “But I’m glad he was polite, sigh,” she wrote.

The singer has publicly said she doesn’t want people sharing photos of X, even if he’s captured alongside his dad in press photos.

“I would really like people to stop posting images of my kid everywhere. I think fame is something you should consent to,” she told Time. “Obviously, things will just be what they are. But I would really, really appreciate that. I can only ask, so I’m just asking.”

Shivon Zilis: Four children
A Canadian-born tech investor who worked mostly in AI start-ups, Zilis connected with Musk before he recruited her to come to his neurotechnology company, Neuralink, where she eventually rose to become an executive. Zilis, who played hockey at Yale, had consulted at OpenAI, among other companies, and the two became close.

According to Isaacson, Zilis chose not to get married but wanted to have kids. So, Musk volunteered to be a sperm donor.

“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to.… If the choice is between an anonymous sperm donor or doing it with the person you admire most in the world, for me that was a pretty fucking easy decision,” she told the author. “I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children.”

According to Isaacson, Zilis had a complication in her pregnancy with twins, which she conceived via IVF. She was hospitalized and ended up being in the same hospital as Grimes’s surrogate with her daughter Y, at the same time, but Grimes had no idea she was there or she was pregnant. The twins, son Strider Sekhar Sirius and daughter Azure Astra Alice, were born a few weeks before Y in fall 2021, after Zilis moved to Austin. In 2024, the couple had another child, Arcadia. On February 28, Zilis announced another son, as well, named Seldon Lycurgus.

It doesn’t seem that Zilis and Musk have ever had a romantic relationship, but they seem to be on good terms. Zilis shares anecdotes and photos of her twins on Twitter, which Musk has responded to with heart emojis. It also seems like the twins (and their mother, presumably) have visited Musk in Washington, DC.

Zilis also tweets about Musk using glowing terms. In October, she clapped back at someone who said Musk was not good at anything with photos from his companies.

“When I first encountered Elon, one of the things that struck me was that he was never interested in doing anything ‘for money’—it would always boil down to ‘is this of existential relevance to humanity,’” she tweeted in December. “It was rare and refreshing—and hopefully increasingly common amongst us as time goes forward.”

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Musk speaks during the first cabinet meeting of President Donald Trump’

s second term on February 26, 2025. JIM WATSON/Getty Images
Ashley St. Clair: Reportedly 2023–2024, allegedly one child