The A to Z of Rocketman Musk’s out of this world love life... and why his child No 8 is called ‘Y’
HE IS the world’s richest man with a £168billion fortune, a maverick genius whose Tesla electric cars have revolutionised the motor industry and who vows that, before the end of this decade, his SpaceX rockets will land humans on Mars. And while Elon Musk is already a larger-than-life figure (actor Robert Downey Jr. based his Iron Man character on him), the announcement this week that the 50-year-old has become a father for the eighth time only served to show his private life was just as colourful and futuristic as his professional one.
For Musk and his on-off girlfriend Grimes, a Canadian singer whose real name is Claire Boucher, have decided to call their daughter – born last December via surrogate – Exa Dark Siderael Musk, or ‘Y’ for short.
The child, born three months after the couple split, had been kept a secret until Grimes, 33, gave an interview to Vanity Fair magazine and the reporter heard a baby crying in a bedroom of her rented modest $40,000 ranch home in a quiet suburb of Austin, Texas, near Tesla’s HQ.
But it was when she revealed the baby’s name that the global headlines – and internet memes – exploded into life.
It was never likely that new Baby Musk would have a conventional moniker. After all, the tycoon’s first child with Grimes, a son born in May 2020, was christened X AE A-12 (pronounced ‘X Ash A Twelve’) and is known as ‘X’.
When asked about his unusual name, Grimes said that it was a nod to their love of science fiction and the mythology of elves.
In an explanation some might find mystifying, she continued: ‘X, the unknown variable. AE, my elven spelling of AI (artificial intelligence), A-12, a precursor to SR-17, our favourite aircraft. No weapons, no defences, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent.’
Her account of their decision to call their daughter ‘Y’ was equally baffling, explaining that Exa is a reference to ‘exaFLOPS’ – a measure of supercomputer performance. She says ‘Dark’ is representative of ‘the unknown’, adding: ‘People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.’
Siderael is both a nod to her favourite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, as well as an ‘elven spelling’ of sidereal, or ‘the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative Earth time’.
Grimes also refuses to be called plain ‘Mum’, insisting her children use her real name, Claire.
And while Musk has vowed to be fully involved in the raising of both children – Grimes claims he is already training ‘X’ to take over his business empire – the couple have moved on to new romantic partners.
As The Mail on Sunday revealed this month, Musk is dating flame-haired Australian actress Natasha Bassett, 27, who, friends insist, is attracted to his brains, not his bank balance.
One told this newspaper: ‘They were friends first and only became romantic when he split from Grimes. She’s gorgeous and could have her pick of men, but says she adores Elon because he’s so smart and interesting to be around.’
Yesterday it was reported that Grimes is dating transgender former US soldier Chelsea Manning – formerly Bradley Manning, who was sentenced to seven years in jail for handing 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Last night, a source who knows Musk said part of his ‘unconventional’ behaviour could be down to
Elon is a true visionary. It makes his approach to life unconventional
his admission last year that he has Asperger’s syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum.
The source said: ‘Elon doesn’t think like anyone else, which is what makes him so brilliant.
‘He’s never led a typical life, so why would you expect his private life to be any less chaotic and unpredictable than his business life?
‘Elon is a true visionary, which is why he’s managed to create multiple billion-dollar companies, including PayPal. But it also makes his approach to life unconventional.
‘He loves children, but his focus is always on his work. He wants to be on the first flight to Mars.
‘Yes, he’s quirky. His children were never going to be called Jane or John. But he’s a great father. He’s very hands-on with all his kids.’
Musk’s older children include 17year-old twins Griffin and Xavier and 16-year-old triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian, whom he had with his first wife Justine, a Canadian author he met at university.
Of all his relationships this was, perhaps, the most conventional.
Justine shuns the limelight but, in a rare 2011 interview with this newspaper, she told how she met the man she called ‘the love of my life’ when they were penniless students at Queen’s University in Ontario.
The son of a South African engineer and a Canadian model, Musk was raised in Pretoria before emigrating to Canada to study. Justine supported her ‘brilliant’ husband as he attended Wharton, America’s top business school, then headed to Silicon Valley to begin working in the ‘Wild West’ of the early internet.
She said that early ‘poor’ time was the happiest, adding: ‘Those days were blissful. He felt he was my own private Alexander the Great. He is brilliant, charismatic, driven, a genius. We were equals.’
The pair married in 2000. Musk was, by then, a wealthy man having sold his first company Zip2, which took newspapers online for the first time, for £250million.
He ploughed that fortune into an
online payment system which became PayPal, a company he sold in 2002 for £950million.
Privately, the couple endured tragedy that year when their first child, a boy called Nevada, died of sudden infant death syndrome at just ten weeks.
While Musk threw himself into his work to cope with the grief, Justine endured round after round of IVF treatments, which resulted in twins and then triplets.
But, she complained, her identity was lost as she was overshadowed by her driven husband.
This is something Grimes has complained of, too, saying she was already a successful recording artist before she met Musk but has since been relegated to being a rich man’s ‘sidepiece’.
Justine explained: ‘The higher up you go the more retro marriage becomes. Any female ambition outside the home becomes inconvenient. A man like Elon is an alpha male at work and that doesn’t just turn off when he comes home.
‘I wanted love and support. In the end I felt crushed. My selfconfidence was shattered.
‘We had big fights. I’d scream, “I’m your wife, not your employee!”, and he’d yell back, “If you were my employee I’d fire you!”’
Her self-esteem was shattered further when, just six weeks after their multi-million-pound divorce became final, Musk married British actress Talulah Riley, a starlet 15 years his junior who was in films such as St Trinian’s, The Boat That Rocked and Pride & Prejudice.
Although the pair met after his split from Justine, the speed of their whirlwind romance left those within Musk’s inner circle reeling.
‘He’s never been a man who takes no for an answer,’ the first Mrs Musk said tearfully. ‘He is a guy who seals the deal in business and in private. If he wanted Talulah she didn’t stand much of a chance.’
The tycoon married his second wife in 2010 in a lavish wedding at Skibo Castle in Scotland – where Madonna married Guy Ritchie.
They divorced two years later, then reconciled and remarried. They divorced for the second time in 2016. Ms Riley is reported to have walked away with £20 million.
Musk went on to date Johnny Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard in late 2016 but they split a year later with him admitting: ‘I was really in love and it hurt bad.’ When he met Grimes in 2018 – initially over Twitter through a shared joke about artificial intelligence – it appeared he may have met his quirky match.
The daughter of a lawyer mother and businessman father, she began creating music – a mixture of electronic, ‘dream pop’ and hip hop – on her computer before developing a cult following online with her music, which often contains sci-fi themes.
She has made six albums and recently signed with Columbia Records, but complains she has been pigeonholed by her association with Musk, whom she calls ‘E’. (He calls her ‘c’, the scientific symbol for the speed of light).
Despite studying astrophysics and neuroscience, she complained: ‘It’s really annoying because people think I’m an airhead….I spent ten years f ****** producing, writing, engineering, every single f ****** thing on my own. And I f ****** proved myself.’
Musk’s friends believe he will never settle down.
In the past year he has sold three homes in Los Angeles – for more than £77million.
He jets around in a Gulfstream private aircraft and vows never to own a home again, tweeting: ‘I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.’
Meanwhile, his eccentric behaviour has infuriated critics.
He was sued by British diver Vernon Unsworth, who was involved in the rescue of 12 Thai boys from an underground cave. When Mr Unsworth accused him of being an attention-seeker, Musk called him ‘pedo guy’ on Twitter. Unsworth sued for defamation but lost. Musk said it was a mere insult and not to be taken literally.
In 2018 Musk tweeted he was thinking of taking Tesla private at £310 a share – more than its trading value at the time – and was fined £30million by the US Security and Exchange Commission, which regulates Wall Street, and was forced to quit as Tesla chairman.
Last November he lost $50billion in two days after asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell ten per cent of his Tesla shock. When 58 per cent of respondents said ‘Yes’ it raised the prospect of a large share sale, which sent stocks tumbling in the biggest two-day decline ever recorded by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
When he openly smoked marijuana during a podcast, two Tesla executives quit and shares in the firm crashed by ten per cent.
Yet he remains the world’s richest man and was last year named Person of the Year by Time magazine, which gushed that he was a ‘mangod’ who ‘dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable’.
His acquaintance said: ‘Elon does what Elon wants to do. No one can control him. That’s what makes him a genius, but it is also what makes him flawed.’
Despite their split, Grimes insists she and Musk will expand their family, saying: ‘We’ve always wanted at least three or four.’
Whatever the future holds, one thing is for certain. If and when those babies arrive they are unlikely to have boring names.
Yes, he’s quirky but he’s a great father. He’s very hands-on with all his kids