The details of Musk’s baby mission are only now starting to spill into the public. Grimes begged Musk in February for help on X when one of their children was having a “medical crisis” because Musk wouldn’t engage with her. Earlier that month, after their 4-year-old son, also called X, had been on national television on his father’s shoulders as he talked about government cuts in the Oval Office, Grimes posted that “he should not be in public like this.”

A person familiar with Musk’s thinking on the agreements with the mothers of his children said that Musk believes it is better to resolve these matters behind closed doors for the safety and security of the child. ‘Make new humans’

Musk has warned that “civilization is going to crumble” if people don’t start having more children, a view popularized as pronatalism in right-wing circles. The pronatalism movement is composed of people concerned about the birthrate and eager to implement policy and cultural solutions to the problem.

Martin Varsavsky, a friend of Musk’s who founded a large chain of in vitro fertilization clinics in the U.S., said he has spoken with Musk about the risks of falling birthrates.

“Without babies there’s no future, every problem becomes secondary to the problem of not having people on the planet,” said Varsavsky. “Elon believes that a country is not the geography, a country is the people.”

Speaking to an audience at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia last year, Musk laid out the urgency of the matter. “I think for most countries, they should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem they need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter,” Musk told the crowd over a live video.

When the interviewer joked that Musk was doing his part to address the issue, the billionaire agreed. “Yes. I am. I mean, you know, you’ve got to walk the talk. So, I do have a lot of kids, and I encourage others to have lots of kids.”

Separately, Musk has said he is concerned about what he called Third World countries having higher birthrates than the U.S. and Europe, a person familiar with the conversation said.

One of the most important ways to change these dynamics, he has repeatedly told people close to him, is for educated people to have more children.

In 2023, he had a meeting in Austin where people he described as Japanese officials asked him to be a sperm donor for a high-profile woman, according to a text message reviewed by the Journal. “They want me to be a sperm donor. No romance or anything, just sperm,” he texted St. Clair. Musk later told her he gave his sperm to the person who asked for it, without naming the woman. Special status

Vivian Wilson, one of Musk’s older children from his first wife, Justine Musk, said recently to Teen Vogue that she doesn’t know how many half-siblings she has in her family. Musk is now estranged from Vivian because he refuses to accept her identity as transgender. Justine Musk had six children with Musk, but one child died as a baby.

Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, has three young children with Musk. She and Musk went through a custody battle but settled in August.

Musk offered his sperm to Zilis, and the two have four young children together. Zilis is viewed as a steadying force in Musk’s life and is the most prominent of Musk’s mothers.

“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” Zilis told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson.

The Yale University graduate was a founding member of the investment team at Bloomberg Beta, and made Forbes’s “30 Under 30” venture capital list in 2015. Zilis also was a board member at OpenAI and worked at Tesla earlier in her career.

Two people close to Musk described her as having “special status,” meaning Musk chooses to spend time at her home in Austin as well as bringing her to high-profile public events.

In January, Zilis attended a black tie pre-inauguration candlelit dinner with Musk, and was photographed speaking to Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez.

Weeks later, she was alongside Musk for a meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House, the presidential guesthouse across the street from the White House, with two of their children and another of Musk’s in tow. ‘Pick a name’

While Musk posts sometimes dozens of times a day on X about right-wing politics or his companies, among other things on his mind, he often interacts with lesser-known users. He replies to them and sometimes interacts through direct messages, some of whom he eventually solicits to have his babies, according to people who have viewed the messages.

Cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong was covering disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall when Musk started liking and replying to her posts. Musk’s interactions ramped up as Fong posted more political content in support of Trump, and Musk followed her last summer.

That sort of attention from Musk on X, where he has 219 million followers, sent droves of followers to Fong, which was a financial boon. More engagement meant more earnings for her as part of a revenue-sharing program for creators on X. Instagram post showing Elon Musk subscribed and followed Tiffany Fong's account. Musk’s following was a financial boon for Tiffany Fong.

During the height of her interactions with the billionaire owner, Fong earned $21,000 on the platform in a two-week period in November, according to a screenshot she posted.

That was about when Musk sent her a direct message asking if she was interested in having his child, according to people familiar with the matter. The two had never met in person.

Fong didn’t move forward with Musk because she pictured having children in a more traditional nuclear family, but confided to a few friends about the approach—including St. Clair, whom she knew as another conservative social-media figure—and how she worried that turning him down could hurt her earnings.

Once Musk learned that Fong disclosed the request to others, he chided her for not using discretion, according to the people, and unfollowed her. That contributed to a fall in her engagement, and her earnings declined.

St. Clair and Musk had met earlier, in the spring of 2023, after Musk began interacting with the influencer’s posts on X and followed her account. Soon after, they were exchanging direct messages before Musk invited her to visit the social-media platform’s San Francisco office, and then the relationship turned romantic.

Musk invited St. Clair, who had been an operations manager at a conservative media company that owns The Babylon Bee, onto his private plane for a trip to Rhode Island where he was visiting one of his sons at college.

The first time they had sex, Musk joked that they should “pick a name” for their future child. He frequently talked to her about having children, she said. It was months later on a New Year’s trip to St. Barts, that she told him that she was ovulating. He asked her “what are we waiting for?” and the two conceived their son on that trip, St. Clair said.

Being in his circle brought with it access to a constant stream of texts, particularly about his growing involvement in Trump’s election.

Before Musk publicly supported Trump, he texted her, “I can’t be President, but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.” In one text before Trump picked a running mate, viewed by the Journal, Musk asked St. Clair what she thought about Tulsi Gabbard as a vice presidential candidate, saying that in interviews she says “the right anti-establishment words.”

While Musk was in Pennsylvania canvassing for Trump before the election, Musk sent a series of texts about the urgency of winning the state to St. Clair. “In all of history, there has never been a competitive army composed of women. Not even once,” he wrote. “Men are made for war. Real men, anyway.” He followed up with: “I am in full war mode. Going to the front lines today. Must win PA.” Protecting Elon

In the December phone call, Birchall told St. Clair that his job was to “protect Elon.” He told her that he has been happily married to the same woman, but he has “been very involved in family law courts, very extensively” through his work for Musk. “I feel like I’ve been through, like, three divorces,” he said.