On Friday morning, Shivon Zilis, a top executive and lieutenant of Elon Musk at his brain chip implant company Neuralink—as well as mother of four of the 14 children he is known to have fathered—took to his social media platform, X, to announce an abrupt shift in their relationship.
“It’s hard to go from in love to let go in a week with no warning, but that’s just how it is sometimes,” Zilis wrote, sharing a screenshot of the X account @BigTechAlert that showed Musk had unfollowed her there. Zilis’ post continued: “I feel happy that I got to show Elon how it feels to be deeply understood, nurtured, and peacefully loved with stability and gentleness,” followed by warm praise and best wishes for Musk. “I do hope and pray he and I can be great friends and coparents,” Zilis concluded, leaving some ambiguity as to what exactly changed between them and whether she remains a director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, though it does not appear as if she has left the position.
While this was a strange revelation of a private matter, it seemed hardly out of the ordinary for Musk’s dizzyingly complicated family life. At this point, all four of the women confirmed to have had children with him—Zilis, ex-wife Justine Wilson, Claire Boucher (better known as Grimes), and Ashley St. Clair—have used X to share details of their time with him or push back against his own claims.
Both Wilson and St. Clair participated in filmmaker Alex Gibney’s sprawling new documentary Musk, in theaters nationwide on October 16 and screening at the WIRED World Fair in Miami next month. St. Clair, a former conservative influencer, alleges that she rejected a nondisclosure agreement worth $40 million that would have prevented her from talking about her tumultuous association with Musk. Among an ensemble of tech entrepreneurs, journalists, and former Musk employees, the pair stand out as arguably the most important critical voices in the film, shedding light on Musk’s rise in Silicon Valley as well as his turn toward MAGA extremism during the 2024 election.
At a run time of nearly four hours, Musk sounds like daunting viewing, though once it’s over, you’ll find yourself wondering if it could’ve been a 10-part miniseries. That’s how much ground there is to cover, from the unrealistic ambitions of landing on Mars and the corporate colonization of Texas to the fatal collisions involving “self-driving” Teslas and the annihilation of the US Agency for International Development by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the beginning of Trump’s second term. (WIRED’s reporting is cited in the documentary, which features interviews with global editorial director Katie Drummond and contributing editor Zoë Schiffer.)
Alongside a fast-moving, comprehensive account of Musk’s career as an all-powerful and untouchable oligarch, his former romantic partners provide crucial context about exactly who he is, piecing together a devastating portrait of the type of man to “let go” of a significant other by unfollowing her on social media.
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