Elon Musk has been outspoken about the dangers of declining birth rates. Photo: Frederic J. Brown/ AFP
Elon Musk is now a father of 12.
The 52-year-old tech billionaire reportedly welcomed his third child with Shivon Zilis, director of special projects at his company Neuralink, earlier this year.
The pair are also parents to twins Strider and Azure, who were born in 2021.
Musk confirmed the news on Monday, two days after Bloomberg Businessweek published the story. Although the public is only just learning about the new arrival, Musk says the child's birth was never intended to be a secret.
"All our friends and family know," the SpaceX founder told Page Six. "Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean 'secret'."
Musk has not yet revealed the name or the sex of the baby.
The exact number of children he has is not confirmed either, but there are 12 known to the public.
Elon Musk and Grimes - seen here at the 2018 Met Gala - have three children together. Photo: supplied
Musk has three children with musician Grimes - Exa Dark Sideræl, Techno Mechanicus and X - and five children with his former wife, author Justine Musk: twins Griffin and Vivian, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian.
Musk has been consistently vocal about declining birth rates, viewing it as a big threat.
In a 2022 interview, when asked about his desired number of children, he remarked, "As many as I can spend time with and be a good father to".
In April, Musk jokingly reflected on his parenting journey. "Whoa," he wrote on X, "I just realised that raising a kid is basically 18 years of prompt engineering".
