MUSK SAYS HE'S FIGHTING FALLING BIRTHRATE

Elon Musk has suggested he is “doing (his) bit” to address “underpopulation” after it emerged he had fathered twins with one of his employees.

The billionaire entrepreneur appeared to make references to his latest offspring on Twitter Thursday, after news broke that Shivon Zilis, a top executive at Musk's neurotechnology firm Neuralink, had given birth to twins fathered by him in November 2021.

“A collapsing birthrate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk, now a father of nine, wrote on Twitter. “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” he said in another tweet.

The twins' birth was first reported by news website Business Insider, citing U.S. court documents, where Musk and Zilis had filed a petition to change their names.

The parents want their children to “have their father's last name” and for their middle names to contain their mother's last name, said the legal filings.

A month later, a Texas judge approved the petition.

Zilis, 36, is identified on her Linkedin profile as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, which was co-founded and chaired by the 51-year-old Musk. She started working at Neuralink in May 2017, the same month that she was named a project director in artificial intelligence at Tesla, where she worked until 2019.

News of the twins' arrival brings Musk's offspring count to nine.

The billionaire shares two children with Canadian singer Grimes. Musk said he and Grimes were “semi-separated,” according to reports in September.

The oldest Musk child by Grimes is a boy named X AE A-12 (pronounced “X AI Archangel”), who is now two, while their sister Exa Dark Siderael Musk (also known as “Y”) was born in December to a surrogate mother.

Musk's first child, Nevada Alexander, by his first wife Canadian author Justine Wilson, died in 2002 at the age of 10 weeks from sudden infant death syndrome. Wilson bore him five more children, all boys and all consisting of twins and triplets.

The oldest of the Musk brood, the twins, are now in their teens and one wants nothing to do with their father. Xavier Alexander Musk, 18, made a legal decision to publicly disown Musk earlier this year.

In a widely reported legal filing the Musk child wrote that his reasons for seeking to transition were: “Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”

Xavier has a twin brother, Griffin Musk. The triplets are brothers, all born in 2006.