Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Elon Musk has fathered at least 14 children with at least four women, intent on fighting civilizational collapse with a “legion” of genetically gifted offspring, according to an explosive new feature in the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: The investigation reveals new details on how the world’s richest man has used his vast wealth and influence to recruit, manage — and at times silence — the mothers of his many children.
The big picture: Musk has been outspoken in his support for natalism, but his motivations — and certainly his methods — diverge from the family-first conservatism driving the broader movement.
- Policies aimed at reversing America’s declining birth rate have gained support within the Republican Party in recent years.
- Musk and many Silicon Valley elites see promoting procreation as a civilization-saving project — one rooted in elite reproduction, human capital, and long-term survival through space colonization or AI.
- Social conservatives like Vice President Vance champion natalism as a means of strengthening the nuclear family and Western culture, while some white nationalists frame it as a tool of demographic preservation.
Zoom in: Musk’s obsession with producing babies in order to reverse population decline — a cause he has frequently promoted in public — has been on full display in his romantic relationships.
- “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates,” Musk texted conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair while she was pregnant with his child, suggesting they recruit other women to accelerate his plans for more children, per the Journal.
- Musk later asked her to have the baby delivered via caesarean section — having previously claimed on X that C-sections allow for “a larger brain.”
Driving the news: The Journal reports that Musk’s longtime fixer Jared Birchall privately manages the billionaire’s financial and PR arrangements — including non-disclosure clauses — with the women who raise his children.
- Musk urged St. Clair to spend time at a compound in Austin — acquired with the help of Birchall — where he envisioned all of the mothers and their children would ultimately live.
- Shivon Zilis — an executive at Musk-owned Neuralink who has four children and “special status” with the billionaire — lives in the gated community.
- Pop star Grimes, who has three children with Musk, refused to live at the compound and says she was bankrupted by a bitter custody battle.
- Musk has six children with his first ex-wife Justine, including a trans daughter whom he refuses to recognize because of her gender identity.
The intrigue: Musk has solicited other potential mothers on his social media platform X, according to the Journal.
- Crypto influencer Tiffany Fong says her earnings from the platform skyrocketed after she started interacting with Musk — then plummeted after she spurned his offer to have his baby.
Between the lines: Musk’s relationship with St. Clair was the most recent to publicly implode.
- Musk offered St. Clair $15 million and $100,000 a month in exchange for her silence, but the relationship broke down — and ultimately spilled out into public view — after she contested elements of the agreement.
- Four days after St. Clair revealed the existence of their child, Musk withdrew the $15 million offer. When the two went to court over a paternity test, he cut her child support to $40,000 a month — and then again to $20,000.
It was not the first time that Musk and Birchall threatened financial retribution against mothers who considered pursuing legal options, according to documents viewed by the Journal.
- “Privacy and confidentiality is the top of the list in every aspect of [Musk’s] life, every aspect, and his entire world is set up to be, like, a meritocracy,” Birchall told St. Clair in December.
The bottom line: Musk says his business empire, political influence and private life are aligned around a singular mission: saving humanity and becoming a multi-planetary species.
- In his conception, SpaceX can use money from Tesla and his other companies to build its rockets, and xAI can help map out life beyond earth. But none of it matters, he has argued, without people.
- “If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter,” Musk said during a speech to an investor conference in Saudi Arabia last year:
