Who is Shivon Zilis, Elon Musk’s partner who accompanied him to meet PM Modi?

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington on Thursday.

He was accompanied by his three children and current partner Shivon Zilis.

This was her second high-profile public appearance in the past six months.

Sharing pictures of the meet on X, PM Modi said, “It was also a delight to meet Mr. @elonmusk’s family and to talk about a wide range of subjects!”

Here’s all we know about her.

About Shivon Zilis

Shivon Zilis, 38, is the Director of Operations and Special Projects at Neuralink, Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) company, which she joined in May 2017.

Born in Markham, Ontario, her mother is a Punjabi and her father is a Canadian, according to The Times of India.

Her LinkedIn profile suggests she graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor in Arts, Economics and Philosophy degree.

Zilis started her career in finance and venture capital at IBM and then moved to Bloomberg Beta. There, she was named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category in 2015.

She served as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019, lending her AI expertise to the Autopilot and chip-design teams.

Zilis has also reportedly worked briefly with OpenAI.

The 38-year-old was placed on LinkedIn’s 35 Under 35 list.

Her relationship with Musk

Musk and Zilis have never made any statement about their relationship.

The two are parents to twins—Strider and Azure—who were born through in vitro fertilisation in 2021.

The information was revealed in April 2022 when the two petitioned to have the twins’ last name changed to “their father’s last name,” with the mother’s last name serving as their middle name. A month later, the petition was granted by a Texas judge.

In early 2024, Musk and Zilis had another child. The gender and name of the child are unknown.

In his biography, journalist Walter Isaacson quoted Zilis as saying, “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to do this.”

At first, Zilis intended to use an anonymous sperm donor, but Musk later proposed that he could be the donor, and she accepted his suggestion.

“I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children,” she said in the book.

Isaacson described Zilis in his TIME cover story as Musk’s “intellectual companion on artificial intelligence since the founding of OpenAI eight years earlier."

Zilis is often seen posting about Musk on X.

On December 22 last year, she quoted a thread from Musk’s timeline, and wrote, “When I first encountered Elon, one of the things that struck me was that he was never interested in doing anything “for money" — it would always boil down to “is this of existential relevance to humanity.""

Zilis attended US President Donald Trump’s dinner with Elon Musk at the Building Museum on January 19, a day before his inauguration to the post. This was her first major public appearance with the Tesla owner, who is also the head of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

In the high-profile event, which has been widely shared on X, Musk was seen interacting with Trump’s daughter Ivanka as Zilis looked on.

Musk and his 12 children

Musk has frequently discussed the importance of having more children to address the “underpopulation crisis.”

He has, in fact, fathered a dozen kids with three different partners.

Musk has five children with his ex-wife, Justine Wilson. The triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian were born in 2006; twins Griffin Musk and Vivian Wilson were born in 2004. The sixth child, Nevada, who was born in 2002, died as an infant.  

Musk and Canadian artist Grimes have three children together: two sons and a daughter. The first son, X Æ A-Xii Musk, was born in May 2020. In December 2021, Exa Dark Siderael, the daughter, was born. Techno Mechanicus Musk, nicknamed ‘Tau’, was born in June 2022.

Musk recently called his son X an “enthusiastic supporter” when bringing him on stage at a Trump pre-inauguration rally.

He also accompanied Musk to the Oval Office when Trump signed an executive order to strengthen DOGE’s authority.

He has three kids with Zilis.

According to reports, the billionaire spent $35 million (Rs 295 crore) last year on a 14,400-square-foot estate in Texas that was intended for his large family, which included 11 children and their moms.

With inputs from agencies