Elon Musk secretly welcomed twins (Evan Agostini/AP)
(Picture: AP)Elon Musk seems to have addressed the news that he secretly welcomed twins last year in a less-than-cryptic social media post.
The 51-year-old Tesla boss, who reportedly fathered two children with a company executive from his firm in 2021, took to social media where he claimed to be “helping underpopulation”.
His remarks came after it was reported that Musk and the childrens’ mother, Shivon Zilis, had filed a petition to “have their father’s last name” and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle names.
Addressing the reports, the father of nine wrote on Twitter: “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” before adding, “Mark my words, they are sadly true.”
In another post, he continued: “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”
Musk is understood to have welcomed the twins in November 2021, a month before he fathered a second child with Grimes via surrogate.
Musk shares another child with Grimes, and five children with his former wife, Justine Wilson.
The mother of Musk’s youngest twins, Zilis, currently works as the director of operations and special projects at Neuralink - a company co-founded by Musk. She was also previously named as a project director in artificial intelligence at Tesla.
Zilis is yet to publicly respond to requests for comment.
For years, Musk has made no secret of his opinions about falling birth rates, and suggested that there’s an imminent population crisis.
Several Twitter users have since responded to Musk suggesting that, contrary to the SpaceX mogul’s thoughts, the planet is actually overpopulated.
Although he believes there’s a need for population growth, he’s also said in previous interviews that this doesn’t translate to life expectancy.
Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO council in 2021, Musk said: “I think it is important for us to die because most of the times, people don’t change their mind, they just die. If they live forever, then we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed.”
