Elon Musk is still doing his part, in his own words, to help the underpopulation crisis.
The Tesla CEO on Sunday confirmed he’s fathered his 12th child — his third with, Shivon Zilis, director of special projects at Neuralink Corp.
Musk, 52, and Zilis, 38, welcomed their baby earlier this year.
In a statement to Page Six, Musk confirmed the child’s birth, but denied rumours that he fathered the baby in secret.
“As for ‘secretly fathered,’ that is also false,” he told the tabloid. “All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean ‘secret.’”
Musk did not reveal the name or sex of his latest child.
Zilis, who is Canadian, already has twins with Musk. The twins, named Strider and Azure, were born in November 2021.
Musk owns Neuralink, a brain computer interface (BCI) company that this year said it implanted a computer chip into the brain of a paralyzed man.
The billionaire has children with two other women.
Musk has had six children with Canadian author Justine Wilson, to whom he was married from 2000 to 2008. Musk’s first child, Nevada, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 2002 when he was only 10 weeks old.
Musk and Wilson also have twins, named Griffin and Vivian, born in 2004. Two years later, the couple had triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian.
In 2020, Canadian musician Grimes gave birth to her first child with Musk, son X Æ A-12. The next year, the former couple welcomed daughter Exa Dark Sideræl (also called Y), and later Techno Mechanicus in 2023.
Grimes sued Musk last year over parental rights, claiming he hasn’t let her see one of their two sons. The custody battle is ongoing.
Musk has long since expressed his concern over global fertility rates, and in 2022 tweeted that a collapsing birth rate is “the biggest danger civilization faces.”
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” Musk wrote.
The world’s population, which currently sits around eight billion, is not declining. This number is expected to grow to 10 billion by the year 2100.
However, the overall rate of global population growth is indeed slowing. Birth rates in many developed countries, including Canada, have declined.
Musk told Page Six, “many countries are already well below replacement rate, and the trend is that almost all will be.”
“This is simply a fact, not a ‘debunked theory,'” he said, adding that “2.1 kids is replacement rate, and obviously the world as a whole will soon drop below that point.”
Birth rates in many developed countries have declined near to or below the 2.1 replacement rate. There are many proposed reasons for the drop, including a lack of affordable housing, financial insecurity and increased acceptance of not having children.
This decline, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), can significantly impact a nation’s economic growth and prosperity.
In January, the Canadian fertility rate hit its lowest level since Statistics Canada began collecting data more than a century ago. The birth rate fell to 1.33 children per woman in 2022, well below the replacement level of around 2.1.
Musk is the richest man alive, according to Forbes, with a net worth of US$213 billion.
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