Inside Elon Musk’s New Mansion for His 11 Children and Ex-Wives

On a quiet, tree-lined street lined with multimillion-dollar properties in Austin, Texas, stands a striking 14,000-square-foot mansion where billionaire Elon Musk, 53, is trying to build a sprawling compound for his family, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

The billionaire has told people close to him that he wants his children (now at least 11) and two-thirds of his wives to live in adjacent homes, so they can grow closer and Mr. Musk can spend more time with his family.

Just behind the building is a six-bedroom mansion that Mr. Musk bought. Both properties are worth about $35 million . A 10-minute walk away is another mansion, where Mr. Musk often stays when he visits Texas.

3 mansions, 3 wives, 11 children and a mysterious billionaire father all living together. It may be an atypical family, but Mr. Musk still seems to want to make his home more crowded.

The concept of having many children

As a supporter of in vitro fertilization (IVF), billionaire Musk is a big believer in increasing the world’s population. He has even offered to donate sperm to friends and acquaintances.

His drive to build the complex and gather his family was not only personal, but also stemmed from concerns about the survival of humanity, which were the foundation of his business empire.

Over the past two years, Musk has become increasingly concerned about what he sees as a threat: declining birth rates. The billionaire believes that a global population decline could wipe out the human race. While demographers say this apocalyptic scenario is highly unlikely, Musk has repeatedly urged people to have as many children as possible on Twitter.

“Childbirth should be considered a national emergency,” he wrote on X/Twitter in June.

Musk is currently in Pennsylvania, where he is running for president and has spent tens of millions of dollars to fund former President Donald Trump. If Trump wins, Musk could become the most powerful private citizen in the United States. Trump has also promised to appoint Musk to a position overseeing the entire federal government.

However, in Texas, the billionaire seems to be still struggling with his large family.

Ms. Shivon Zilis, CEO of Neuralink and one of the three wives of billionaire Elon Musk. Photo: New York Times.

One of Elon Musk’s wives, Neuralink CEO Shivon Zilis, has moved into the mansion with their children. However, Musk’s other wife, Claire Boucher, is in a long-running legal battle with the billionaire and has so far kept her distance.

Mr Musk’s views on childbearing are in line with those of a number of global leaders, and he has become a symbol for pro-natalists.

In a 2015 biography, Musk worried that educated people weren’t having enough kids. “I’m not saying that only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids. I’ve noticed a lot of smart women don’t have kids or only have one. That’s probably not a good thing,” he wrote.

Mr. Musk and his first wife, Justine Musk, had their first child in 2002, two years after they married. However, the baby died in infancy.

The couple went on to have five children through in vitro fertilization (IVF) before divorcing in 2008, including twins Griffin and Vivian, now 20, and triplets Saxon, Damian, and Kai, now teenagers. Musk, according to a source close to the couple, believes IVF is a more efficient way to have children because they have some control over the process.

Mr. Musk was twice married and divorced to actress Talulah Riley. One factor in their split was that Ms. Riley wanted to focus on her career instead of having children. The actress’s representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Obsess

In 2020, Musk and his third wife, Boucher, had their first child, X Æ A-Xii. Over the next few years, Musk continued to have children with both Boucher and Zilis. And that caused some trouble for the billionaire.

In 2021, Mr. Musk donated sperm to Ms. Zilis without Ms. Boucher’s consent. That same year, the billionaire and Ms. Boucher also welcomed a second child, conceived through IVF and carried by a surrogate.

The two women, who were once friends, happened to be at the same Austin hospital at the same time. Zilis gave birth to twins in late 2021, weeks before Boucher’s daughter was born. Boucher found out Musk was the father of Zilis’s children a month after they were born, two sources said.

Things got more complicated when Mr Musk took the name he and Ms Boucher had chosen for their daughter — Valkyrie — and used it on Ms Zilis’s child. Ms Boucher was so offended that she wrote a song about it and posted it on Twitter.

“The child cursed with my daughter’s name will have to bear her mother’s shame,” Boucher wrote on X/Twitter , which she later deleted. Zilis eventually changed her daughter’s name, and Boucher also chose another name.

Mr. Musk and Ms. Claire Boucher at the Met Gala in 2018. Photo: New York Times.

Over the past three years, Mr. Musk has repeatedly expressed interest in the declining birth rate. In 2021, his foundation donated $10 million to the University of Texas to study fertility and population trends. Since 2021, he has posted at least 67 times on the topic, with 33 posts in 2023.

“I’m trying to encourage more people to become parents and ideally have 3 or more kids,” Musk wrote on X/Twitter in February.

Few researchers believe humanity is facing a demographic catastrophe in the coming decades. In July, the United Nations said the global population, currently at 8 billion, is expected to increase by 2 billion over the next 60 years, before gradually declining by about 700 million.

But some developed countries such as Japan, Italy and Germany have faced difficulties in coping with the economic consequences of falling birth rates, such as shrinking workforces and rising costs of caring for the elderly.

“People who deliberately choose not to have children are committing an ethical problem: They are essentially asking other people’s children to take care of them in their old age,” Musk wrote on X/Twitter in 2023.

The declining birth rate has also worried some prominent figures in the tech world. Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to pro-natalist organizations and is the father of five children. Telegram messaging app founder Pavel Durov also claims to have fathered more than 100 children through sperm donation.

Meanwhile, despite the discord in his extended family, Mr. Musk continued to buy houses. The billionaire even offered prices 20 to 70 percent higher than the value of the houses.

It is unclear who will live in the homes. Some of the older Musk children are not close to the billionaire, such as his transgender daughter Vivian. In an interview, Musk said Vivian was “dead, killed by the woke virus.” Vivian also criticized the billionaire for pretending to care about his children.

“He is not a family man,” she wrote on Threads in August, declining to comment further.