68. Father of the Year

In 2021, Elon Musk, the vision­ary behind com­pa­nies like Tes­la and SpaceX, wel­comed twins with Shiv­on Zilis, a promi­nent AI investor and oper­a­tions man­ag­er at Neu­ralink. Their con­nec­tion began in 2015 when Musk recruit­ed Zilis to Ope­nAI, lead­ing to a deep intel­lec­tu­al com­pan­ion­ship. Zilis, aligned with Musk’s vision and hav­ing a strong desire for moth­er­hood, agreed to con­ceive via IVF, with Musk as the sperm donor. This deci­sion was influ­enced by Musk’s advo­ca­cy for intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als to have more chil­dren, con­sid­er­ing declin­ing birthrates a threat to human civ­i­liza­tion.

The twins, Strid­er Sekhar Sir­ius and Azure Astra Alice, were born pre­ma­ture­ly but healthy, with Zil­is’s last name, reflect­ing her expec­ta­tion of Musk’s lim­it­ed involve­ment due to his busy lifestyle. Con­trary to her expec­ta­tions, Musk active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in their upbring­ing, bond­ing with them unique­ly despite his emo­tion­al wiring.

Par­al­lel­ly, Musk and Grimes, his part­ner with whom he has a son named X, decid­ed to have anoth­er child via sur­ro­ga­cy dur­ing a rocky phase in their rela­tion­ship. Grimes desired a daugh­ter, lead­ing to the birth of their child through a sur­ro­gate, coin­cid­ing close­ly with the twins’ birth. Musk’s life dur­ing this peri­od was a blend of per­son­al mile­stones and pro­fes­sion­al endeav­ors, marked by the births and his con­tin­u­ous work on projects like the Rap­tor engine.

This chap­ter jux­ta­pos­es Musk’s per­son­al life com­plex­i­ties, includ­ing uncon­ven­tion­al fam­i­ly dynam­ics and mul­ti­ple chil­dren with dif­fer­ent part­ners, against his relent­less pur­suit of tech­no­log­i­cal and space explo­ration advance­ments. The nar­ra­tive under­scores Musk’s mul­ti­fac­eted per­sona, bal­anc­ing ground­break­ing pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments with a non-tra­di­tion­al per­son­al life shaped by futur­is­tic visions and intel­lec­tu­al com­pan­ion­ships.