Elon Musk is certainly no stranger to headline-making relationships. He has a litany of past lovers, famously including Canadian singer Grimes, and actress Amber Heard. It is also not just Musk’s sprawling business empire that he seeks to rapidly, and often recklessly, expand. Musk is a pro-natalist – someone who believes a declining birth rate is a threat to civilisation. With his trademark vigor, he is doing his part to counter that threat, so far by fathering at least 11 children.
Recently Musk has been in the news prolifically, largely due to the extent of his campaigning for Donald Trump as president. HIs role as right-hand man to the new-President elect has now seen him announced as co-leader of Trump’s new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’. Though Musk has also been busy at home, making headlines for forwarding unorthodox plans to create a mini commune for the mothers of his children.
In an apparent effort to unite all of his offspring, the Tesla CEO reportedly wants their mothers to live in a secret compound. The New York Times states that he has bought two large homes in Austin, Texas, which are a short walk away from one another, in order for his children to interact more regularly and to improve the ease of him visiting them.
He is said to have offered nearly 70 per cent over market price for two of the homes, in order to keep the purchases under wraps. The publication reports that he plans for the mothers of two of his children to live in these neighbouring properties, while he lives in a separate property just 10 minutes away.
Musk has kids from previous relationships with Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink, who is said to have already moved into one of the new homes with her children. He also has three children with Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, though it is not yet confirmed if she’ll move in to one of the new homes, and the pair are currently engaged in a custody battle.
Keeping up? Yes, Musk has a long and storied relationship history.
In fact, just recently the world’s richest man was linked to Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister. The pair were photographed gazing into each other’s eyes at the glitzy Atlantic Council thinktank’s Global Citizen Awards dinner, which led to romance rumours online. Musk was then forced to deny being in a relationship with Meloni on X (where else): “I was there with my Mom. There is no romantic relationship whatsoever with PM Meloni.”
But it wouldn’t have been a leap, as in his own words: “I’m just a fool for love,” as he told Walter Isaacson, who wrote his 2022 biography. “I am often a fool, but especially for love.”
Here’s a look back at Musk’s full relationship history.
Jennifer Gwynne
Musk met his first girlfriend, Jennifer Gwynne, in the autumn of 1994 when both were students at the University of Pennsylvania. Gwynne, then a junior, was working as a resident advisor in the accommodation where Musk also lived. She has described Musk as a reserved intellectual, and focused, often staying up late into the night studying or working on his projects.
Their relationship developed as they spent more time together and, by 1995, Gwynne and Musk were dating. After about a year, the pair split. Gwynne, who had been studying abroad, explained Musk was "not very good at a long-distance relationship” and talking on the phone "seemed like a waste of time to him”.
In 2022, Gwynne made headlines when she auctioned off various pieces of memorabilia from her relationship with Musk, including photos, love notes, and a gold necklace that Musk gifted her.
Justine Wilson
Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while they were both studying at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, in the early Nineties. After noticing her across the common room, Musk approached her.
"He invited me out for ice cream. I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door," she wrote in a candid 2010 Marie Claire essay. "Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in an overheated room in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Musk was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands. He's not a man who takes no for an answer."
Although Musk later changed universities, he continued to pursue Justine. However, they split before Justine moved to Japan for a year to teach English as a second language. A week after she returned home to Canada, he happened to call her. Justine moved to California to be with Musk, and they soon became engaged.
The pair married in 2000, and had their first child, a son named Nevada, two years later, who passed away just 10 weeks after he was born of sudden death infant syndrome (SIDS). After his death, the couple used IVF to conceive again, and Justine gave birth to twins (one of whom they named Xavier, in part after Professor Xavier from X-Men) and then to triplets.
Wilson has said that the couple had a "dream lifestyle" filled with glamorous events, multimillion-dollar homes, and a cadre of staff catering to them. However, she also felt a lack of "intimacy and empathy" from Musk.
She wrote that a car accident in 2008 was a "wake-up call" for her. "I barely recognised myself," she said. "I had turned into a trophy wife." The accident prompted the couple to try therapy but, after just a month, Musk allegedly gave her an ultimatum: to continue living their old life or to get a divorce. The next day, after eight years of marriage, Musk reportedly filed for divorce.
In her essay, Wilson also described Musk as “alpha in the relationship”, recounting the challenges of their marriage and divorce. His business-like approach to his companies and his fatherhood also trickled into the couple’s relationship. She claimed: "In the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Musk's judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. 'I am your wife,' I told him repeatedly, 'not your employee.' 'If you were my employee,' he said just as often, 'I would fire you.' "
The couple’s split resulted with shared custody of their five children. Wilson also kept the couple's LA home, and received spousal and child support from Musk, he wrote in 2010 for Business Insider.
Talulah Riley
Six weeks after he filed for divorce from Wilson, Musk was already engaged to Talulah Riley, a 22-year-old British actress who had been living with her parents.
The pair met at a bar in London, according to Business Insider. Riley later recalled that she didn't know who he was at the time. "I remember thinking that this guy probably didn't get to talk to young actresses a lot and that he seemed quite nervous," she told biographer Ashlee Vance. "I decided to be really nice to him and give him a nice evening. Little did I know that he'd spoken to a lot of pretty girls in his life."
Riley moved to LA, and the pair tied the knot at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland in 2010. Riley, best known for her roles in films like Pride & Prejudice and Inception, quickly became a key figure in Musk’s life. However, their marriage seemed to mirror Musk’s volatile lifestyle. They divorced in 2012, with Musk famously tweeting, “It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day.”
Less than a year later, the couple rekindled their relationship, remarrying in 2013. But the second attempt didn’t last either. They split once more in 2014 and, by 2016, the couple had officially divorced for a second time. Their on-again, off-again romance captivated tabloids, and Musk has spoken fondly of Riley in interviews, even after their final split, calling her “a great person”.
In 2022, Riley told the Independent that she knew it was "strange" to marry and divorce Musk twice. "I suppose the reason to get remarried was just because it felt silly to be together unmarried after having been married,” she said. “You know, it's like a habit. We were saying, 'This is my husband.' 'This is my wife.' 'Oh, wait, no, we're not that any more. We better be that again.' "
Amber Heard
While Musk and Riley were separated in 2012, Musk reached out to director Robert Rodriguez, requesting an introduction to actress Amber Heard, as both Musk and Heard had appeared in Rodriguez's film Machete Kills. A dinner was arranged, but Heard, who was in a relationship with Johnny Depp at the time, didn’t turn up.
It wasn’t until several years later that Musk and Heard connected, but the exact timing of when their relationship turned romantic is unclear. During Depp’s 2022 defamation trial against Heard, the actor alleged that Musk and Heard began secretly dating in 2015, while Heard testified that she didn’t become acquainted with Musk until the 2016 Met Gala, after Depp failed to accompany her on the red carpet.
"I didn't recognise [Musk] until we started talking and he reminded me we had met once before," Heard recalled during the trial. "He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice. He sat at a nearby table and we got to speaking that night and eventually became friends."
Romantic rumours began to swirl between Musk and Heard in 2016, shortly after she filed for divorce from Depp. In April 2017, they were spotted in Australia together and, the following month, insiders shared that the couple were "very serious about each other”.
By August, the couple had split, citing conflicting schedules and the demands of their careers. Musk later admitted in an interview that he was heartbroken, revealing his deep emotional investment in the relationship. Heard and Musk briefly reunited but split again in early 2018.
Grimes (Claire Boucher)
Elon Musk’s most recent high-profile relationship has been with the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes. The two surprised the world when they appeared together at the 2018 Met Gala, with Grimes, known for her eclectic music and avant-garde persona, an unlikely partner for the tech mogul.
In January 2020, Grimes announced she was pregnant with Musk’s child. "It's sacrificing your body and your freedom. It's a pretty crazy sacrifice and only half of the population has to do it," she said in an interview. "It was really profound to me when I decided I was going to do it, to actually go through the act of unprotected sex... I do actually just really love my boyfriend. So I was like, 'You know, sure.' "
Their first child was born in May 2020, famously named X Æ A-12, then changed to X Æ A-Xii in order not to breach California naming regulations.
By September 2021, though, the couple revealed they had "semi-separated". "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA,” Musk told Page Six. "She's staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room."
Despite their separation, Elon Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child via surrogate in December 2021. In a March 2022 Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed the birth of their daughter, Exa "Y" Dark Sideræl Musk. During the interview, she also disclosed that, despite earlier reports of their split, she and Musk had reconciled and were back together at the time.
"There's no real word for it. I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid," she said. "We live in separate houses. We're best friends. We see each other all the time... We just have our own thing going on, and I don't expect other people to understand it."
However, on the same day Vanity Fair published the story, Grimes shared that the couple were in fact broken up again.
"Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article," she tweeted. "But he's my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now, I think Devin [Gordon of Vanity Fair] wrote that part of the story rly well. Sique - peace out."
Shivon Zilis
In 2022, it emerged that Musk had fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, a 35-year-old executive at Neuralink, in November 2021, just weeks before welcoming his second child with musician Grimes via surrogate in December of the same year.
Shivon Zilis, a high-ranking executive at Neuralink – one of Musk’s most ambitious ventures aimed at creating brain-machine interfaces – quietly gave birth to twins in late 2021.
Zilis, a prominent figure in artificial intelligence, has long been a close professional associate of Musk. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, their connection grew both personally and professionally, culminating in the birth of the twins, conceived via IVF.
This revelation remained private until July 2022, when court documents surfaced showing that Musk and Zilis sought to change the twins' last name to "Musk”, linking them directly to their father.
“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” Zilis said. At the same time, Musk was fathering another child via surrogate with his now ex-wife, Grimes. Grimes did not know that Zilis, who was a friend of hers, was pregnant by Musk.
