Musk has made his mark but I am not proud of him, says his father
‘Elon has to find a woman to give up what she’s doing, and that’s not easy. I worry about him’
ELON MUSK may be the world’s richest man, but it appears he is still second in his father’s affections, after Errol Musk revealed it is his younger son Kimbal who is his “pride and joy”.
In an interview on Australian radio yesterday, the Errol Musk claimed he was not proud of the chief executive of Tesla, and does not drive one of his coveted electric cars.
Speaking to The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Mr Musk said he had never received a handout from his eldest son, who is worth an estimated $260billion (£217 billion).
“We are a very frugal, stingy family,” said Mr Musk, a South African former pilot and engineer, who made his wealth in property development.
Asked whether he was proud of Elon, the 76-year-old said: “No, well, you know, I mean, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time. It’s not as though we suddenly started doing something.”
Elon is Errol’s eldest son with his first wife, Maye Musk. The pair also had a daughter, Tosca, 48, and their other son Kimbal, 49.
“He’s my pride and joy, Kimbal,” Mr Musk said. While acknowledging that Elon has “surpassed the mark”, Mr Musk stressed that Kimbal, a chef and restaurateur, was also a billionaire.
Despite his success, Elon, the Tesla and Spacex chief executive, was “not as happy as he’d like to be” because he feels he is “behind schedule” with his career, Errol Musk said.
“Where he is now, he would have liked to have been there five years ago,” he said.
The patriarch contrasted the brothers’ love lives, praising Kimbal’s wife Christiana Wyly, while worrying that Elon would never find a partner willing to sacrifice their career. “She’s with him all the time and that’s very, very nice,” he said. “Elon doesn’t [have that] and I worry about him.”
He added: “He has to find a woman to give up what she’s doing, and that’s not easy”. Elon has been married three times – once to Justine Wilson, his first wife, and twice to Talulah Riley – and has fathered 10 children.
It recently emerged that in November 2021 he welcomed twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his Neuralink, his neurotechnology firm, a month before the arrival of his second child with the musician Grimes, his on-again, off-again partner.
Errol also has several children by other partners, including two children whom he welcomed in recent years with Jana Bezuidenhout, his 34-yearold stepdaughter.
When asked about the unusual relationship in the rambling, 20-minute radio interview, the self-proclaimed “ladies’ man” insisted that it was “completely normal,” despite the 42-year age gap and previously being married to Ms Bezuidenhout’s mother.