Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once expressed concerns about the falling birth rate and said he was doing his best to help the underpopulation crisis.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk tweeted.
“Mark my words, they are sadly true,” he said in another tweet.
The Billionaire tech entrepreneur made the comment after a report by Business Insider that Musk quietly welcomed twins in November with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his artificial intelligence company Neuralink.
The babies’ mother, 36-year-old Canadian Shivon Zilis, has worked at multiple of his other companies, including OpenAI and electric car manufacturer Tesla, Insider said.
She and Musk, who became the richest person in the world last year, in April filed a petition with a Texas court for the children to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name,” Insider reported, referring to court documents obtained by the publication.
The petition was granted in May, the site said.
Last month, Musk spoke about the issue of population collapse and joked that he was doing his part in solving the issue while registering his concern about the falling birth rates in the US.
In May, Musk had shared statistics regarding the total fertility rate (TFR) of the United States. TFR refers to the number of children a woman will have. The graph highlighted a steep decline in the rate over the decades, to a point where it is below the “replacement level.”
Musk’s babies, whom Insider report were born in November, arrived just weeks before the CEO, 51, and music artiste Grimes had their second child via surrogate.
They welcomed a baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk – although the parents will mostly call her Y. In total, Musk has fathered 10 children, one of whom died shortly after birth.
Last month, one of his children who recently turned 18 filed a petition in a California court to change her name and gender identity to female.
She cited “the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form” as one of the reasons for the name change, according to the court document.
The chief of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk early this year launched a now-stalled $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, with Insider reporting that Zilis’s name has come up as an option for who might eventually run the social media giant.
Tesla, which has relocated to Texas from California, has faced a series of lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment against Black workers as well as sexual harassment.
And in May, the South African-born Musk himself denied allegations that he groped and exposed himself to a flight attendant six years ago, with news outlet Insider reporting SpaceX paid a woman $250,000 in 2018 to settle a misconduct claim against him.