Elon Musk has revealed he has a third child with singer Grimes, days after she accused him of keeping her from seeing their children.
In a post on X late Saturday, Musk confirmed that the son’s name is Tau Techno Mechanicus, or Tau for short, following a book review in the New York Times first announced the child’s existence.
It was already known that Musk, 52, shared two children with the 35-year-old singer: three-year-old son X Æ A-12, who goes by “X,” and one-year-old daughter Exa Dark Sideræl, affectionately known as “Y.”
Tau’s age was not disclosed. The revelation came shortly after Grimes begged Musk, writing “show me my son” in a now-deleted social media post – but it is now unclear whether she was referring to Tau, or their eldest son X.
The Greek letter Tau, which resembles the letter ‘T’ in style, is derived from the Phoenician letter taw, which was written as the modern letter ‘X’, an apparent obsession of Musk. He has changed Twitter’s name to X since purchasing the social media platform last year.
Elon Musk has revealed that he has a previously undisclosed third child with singer Grimes, named Tau Techno Mechanicus, or Tau for short
It was already known that Musk, 52, shared two children with the 35-year-old singer: three-year-old son X Æ A-12, who goes by “X” (with him above), and one-year-old daughter Exa Dark Sideræl, affectionately known as ‘Y’
Musk dated Claire Boucher, who goes by her stage name Grimes, for about three years, and the couple semi-broke up in March 2022, although they said at the time that they remained close.
The billionaire had a total of eleven children, including his firstborn with ex-wife Justine Wilson, who tragically died at a young age from cot death.
Musk welcomed twins with Neuralink director Shivon Zilis in November 2021, just weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate.
On Thursday, Grimes suggested in a now-deleted tweet that there was a falling out between her and Zilis, and that Musk would not allow her to see her own son.
According to screenshots of the tweet — beneath a photo of Musk and the two children he shares with Zilis — Grimes wrote a message addressed to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson.
“Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or please respond to my lawyer,” she wrote.
‘I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until now, despite the situation completely tearing my family apart.’
The tweet has since been deleted, but was written under a new image of Musk and the twins he had with Zilis
SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Canadian musician Grimes in 2018
Musk’s complicated personal life included three marriages and three divorces, including two with the same woman, and seven children from two long-term romances plus the twins with Zilis that they conceived via in vitro fertilization.
Elon started dating Grimes in April 2018, and the eccentric couple made headlines when they made their red carpet debut at the Met Gala the following month.
Amid a series of breakups and reconnections, the couple welcomed their first son ‘X AE A-XII’ in May 2020.
Their second child Exa Dark Sideræl, named Y, was born via surrogate in December 2021.
Musk had his other children with his ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson.
He married Justine Wilson in 2000. Their first son Nevada tragically passed away at ten weeks in 2002, before the couple welcomed twins Griffin and Xavier in 2004.
Xavier – now 19 – has since transitioned to being a woman. Her name is Vivian and she has famously dropped her father’s surname – after telling the court she no longer wanted to be related to him in any way.
Zilis, a native of Ontario, Canada, met Musk through OpenAI, the nonprofit artificial intelligence research and implementation organization that Musk co-founded in 2015, Insider reported.
In 2015, Zilis was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the venture capital category, and in 2017 she joined Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink as director of operations and special projects, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Musk and Zilis filed a petition last April to change the twins’ names so that they “have their father’s last name and their mother’s last name as part of their middle name,” according to court documents.
The photo of Musk, Zilis and the twins – posted by Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson – was taken at Zilis’ home in Austin, Texas, according to an excerpt from the biography published in Time.