Things get complicated for Elon Musk with new twins report he shares with Neuralink exec

Last month, Insider published a bombshell report about a former SpaceX flight attendant who accused SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk of proposing to her for sex in 2016 and who the company paid $250,000 to shut up. Musk called the story "a politically motivated blockbuster," while SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell came to Musk's defense in a company-wide email. , writing, "I personally think the allegations are false; not because I work for Elon, but because I worked closely with him for 20 years and never saw or heard anything resembling these allegations."

Alas, a far more damaging new insider report puts Shotwell – and all of Musk's other executive insider companies – in an even more uncomfortable position.

According to the story, published late afternoon, "Court documents obtained by Insider show that tech mogul Elon Musk quietly had twins last November with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis In April, Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed a petition to change the twins' names to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name in their middle name".

The order was approved by a judge in Austin in May, the report adds, and the "twins were born weeks before Musk and Claire Boucher, the musician who plays Grimes, had their second child. via surrogate in December."< /p>

Zilis (or someone acting on his behalf) has already removed any mention of Neuralink from a website about his background, as well as dismantling his LinkedIn page.

Until recently, this same page reported that the work experience of Zilis, a Yale graduate who started her career at IBM and then invested for Bloomberg Beta, a Bloomberg-backed company, to in early 2016 included Neuralink, Tesla and OpenAI. .

All three, of course, have deep ties to Musk, who founded Neuralink, co-founded OpenAI, and took over as CEO of Tesla in 2008.

Specifically, says Insider, Zilis first met Musk in 2016 when she was a director of OpenAI, where she is now the youngest member of its board.

In 2017, she reportedly joined Tesla as a project manager.

Today, Zilis holds the title of Director of Operations and Special Projects for Neuralink, where Musk serves as co-CEO.

The outlet also says Zilis was recently touted as one of the people Musk could use to run Twitter if his plan to acquire the company for $44 billion goes as planned.

TechCrunch has not independently verified Insider's account. Musk, who is usually very active on Twitter and hasn't responded to Insider's requests for comment (or Zilis), meanwhile remains mum for now, though he tweeted last month that the drop birth rates in the United States is a "demographic disaster". adding, "I mean, I'm doing my part haha. »

The biggest question the story raises, beyond the number of children Musk plans to father - he appears to have at least nine with various partners - is whether any of these companies have fraternization policies that prohibit romantic relationships between a manager and a staff journalist.

While most companies the size of Tesla and SpaceX prohibit romantic relationships between employees separated by two levels in the chain of command, Musk has been known to flout traditional rules. (A Tesla employee handbook from 2020 isn't exactly standard fare, warning that "our assumption will be that if you don't call and show up to work, you're a fool. You better have a very good reason for not letting us know why you didn't come in or why you left here.")

Even though Neuralink, Tesla, and OpenAI (where Musk spun off in 2019) have no policies in place preventing fraternization, this new report is extremely problematic. Musk having secret children with a direct report will surely be a huge distraction for other staff members. (You can imagine the water cooler conversation.) It's bad for morale, which is the last thing Tesla in particular would seem to need right now given its many other