All About Elon Musk and Grimes’ 3 Kids

Elon Musk and Grimes secretly welcomed their third child, Techno Mechanicus, in 2022

Elon Musk and Grimes may no longer be together, but new details are still emerging about their family life.

Since first being linked in 2018, the former couple have welcomed three children: X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno Mechanicus. While Musk and Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, were public with their first pregnancy, they have since decided to keep the births of their children private amid their on-again, off-again relationship.

In fact, the pair kept the birth of their third child secret for over a year before news surfaced in journalist Walter Isaacson's biography, Elon Musk. Now, Grimes says she is focused on keeping the children “out of the public eye” and making sure she has the best possible relationship with them as they grow up.

“I really care about having a very good relationship with my kids. I think I understand how to be a good parent to them. Both enforcing discipline and being their friend,” Grimes shared in an interview with Wired. “Who knows, maybe they’ll resent me and reject family culture, but I feel like they will not.”

In October 2023, Grimes filed a petition requesting to establish parental rights for all three children, according to online records viewed by PEOPLE. A petition to establish parental rights is often a means of identifying who a child's legal parents are if they aren't married.

The filing came a month after the singer addressed headlines surrounding her co-parenting relationship with Musk, expressing her desire to "de-escalate the narrative" surrounding her and her ex. In a lengthy post on Twitter (now known as X), Grimes also revealed that she had spoken to Shivon Zilis — the Neuralink exec who welcomed twins with Musk just weeks before Exa was born — after previously requesting that Zilis "unblock" her in a since-deleted post.

"We respect each other a lot and we're excited to become friends and have the kids grow up together," Grimes wrote of her relationship with Zilis.

Here's everything to know about Elon Musk and Grimes’ children.

X Æ A-Xii

In January 2020, Grimes revealed she was pregnant with her first child by sharing a topless photo that showed off her baby bump on Instagram. In the comments of her post, she called “being knocked up” a “very feral & war-like state of being.” While she did not share who the father of the baby was at the time, she later confirmed that Musk had fathered the infant.

“For a girl, it’s sacrificing your body and your freedom. It’s a pretty crazy sacrifice and only half of the population has to do it. It was really profound to me when I decided I was going to do it, to actually go through the act of unprotected sex,” she told Rolling Stone.

“I do actually just really love my boyfriend,” Grimes shared of Musk, explaining how she decided to welcome the idea of getting pregnant, “So I was like, ‘You know, sure.’ ”

On May 4, 2020, Grimes gave birth to the couple’s son, whom they named X Æ A-12. The musician explained that the name had a lot of personal significance, with X representing “the unknown variable” and Æ being her “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence).”

She added that part of the name is a nod to the CIA’s Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane, “the precursor to SR-17” and the couple’s “favorite aircraft,” known to have “no weapons, no defenses, just speed.” Meanwhile, the “A” in the name also represents “Archangel,” which Grimes said is her “favorite song,” and the number “12” stands for the Chinese zodiac sign of the rat.

Just a few weeks later, Musk and Grimes announced that they had changed the infant’s name to X Æ A-Xii, explaining that they had to remove “the numbers to confirm to California law.” Grimes added that after the change she thought the Roman numerals also looked “better.”

While the pair call the little boy “X” for short, they have shared various pronunciations of his full name. Both Grimes and Musk agree that “X” is spoken “like the letter,” but the musician says “Æ” is pronounced "like how you said the letter A then I." Meanwhile, Musk shared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that “the ‘Æ’ is pronounced like ‘ash.’ ”

As their son has gotten older, Grimes and Musk have kept his life mostly private but have shared small snippets about him. Ahead of his first birthday, Grimes posted a sweet video of X playing with her synth and later revealed that he was very into “radical art.”

“I’ve watched Apocalypse Now and stuff with my baby. He's into radical art. Like, he just actually is, and I don't think it's problematic to engage with them on that level," she told The New York Times.

Later that year, Grimes revealed that X does not call her “mom” and instead calls her by her first name, Claire. Grimes explained that she doesn’t “identify” with the word mother and that X had never called her that.

“X, he says Claire but he doesn't say, like, mama … Like, maybe he can sense my distaste for the word mother. Which I don't even know why I have a distaste for it ’cause I respect it. I just, I can't identify with it weirdly,” Grimes said in an interview with Vogue.

In 2022, X made headlines as he joined his father in the office amid his planned acquisition of Twitter. According to The Washington Post, X was running around the office while tense discussions were underway and Musk had taken over the conference room for his son, with the room reportedly “strewn with toys.” Musk even shared a photo of X’s official employee badge.

While some outlets framed the situation as inappropriate, Grimes said she was happy that X could join his father at work, after previously revealing that Musk sees the little boy as his “protégé.”

“We shud normalize having kids in adult work spaces. Baby joy is contagious for adults, amazing to have at work and they learn so much.  Win win for all. X shadows engineering/ strategy meetings. can identify obscure rocket design, knows all abt grid fins, entry burns, robots,” Grimes shared on social media.

Since then, X has continued to develop his passion for spacecraft, with Grimes calling him a “little engineer.” In an interview with Wired, she explained that it’s hard to buy him toys as he gets upset when they’re not “anatomically correct.” It got to a point where she admits she was worried about his “obsession with space,” especially after he witnessed SpaceX's Starship rocket explode after takeoff in April 2023.

“X knows a lot about rockets. It's crazy. He knows more about rockets than me,” she told the outlet. “When X saw Starship blow up, he had, like, a three-day PTSD meltdown. Every hour, he was waking up and going, ‘Starship … ’ and I had to rub his back.”

Exa Dark Sideræl

In December 2021, Musk and Grimes secretly welcomed a daughter via surrogate. News of their new addition didn’t surface until March 2022, when Grimes opened up about the little girl in Vanity Fair. In the cover story, Grimes revealed that they named her Exa Dark Sideræl but call her Y for short. Although Grimes wanted to name the infant Odysseus after a girl she’d seen in her dreams, the couple ultimately agreed on Y.

Like her big brother, Y’s name has significance to her parents. Exa refers to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS, while Dark represents “the unknown.” Grimes explained, “People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.”

Meanwhile, Sideræl is pronounced “sigh-deer-ee-el” and is a “more elven” spelling of sidereal. According to Grimes, it means “the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time.” It also has a double meaning and is a tribute to Grimes’ favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who “chooses to abdicate the ring.”

As for the little girl’s nickname, Grimes explained in a social media post that she’s called “Y” or “ ‘Why?’ or just ‘?’ ” although she noted that the “government won't recognize that.”

Since her birth, Grimes and Musk have kept many other details of Y’s life private. Grimes has only shared small glimpses into the little girl’s life, sharing that she loves techno music, especially the musician Boris Brejcha.

“My daughter is dancing to techno over this copy of the birth of tragedy by Nietzsche - what a queen,” Grimes tweeted alongside a photo of the then-9-month-old leaning on a bench in a black onesie with a pink bow headband in her blonde hair.

Grimes has also shared that Y is following in her brother X’s footsteps and is a “little engineer” like him. While X is focused on rockets, Grimes told Wired that Y likes “industrial shipping” — admitting that her daughter is a “little strange.”

Techno Mechanicus

In September 2023, it was revealed that Musk and Grimes had secretly welcomed a third child in 2022. According to journalist Walter Isaacson's biography about Musk, the pair welcomed a son named Techno Mechanicus, who also goes by “Tau.”

“Tau is so amazing. He came out with eyes that could just see so deeply into your soul, with so much knowledge. He looks like a little Spock. He's definitely a Vulcan,” Grimes told Isaacson in the biography.

Not much else is known about the little boy — and Grimes would like to keep it that way. In a tweet responding to comments she made in the biography, Grimes shared that she had no plans to post any photos or further information.

“I wish I could show u how cute little Techno is 👽 but my priority rn is keeping my babies out of the public eye, Plz respect that at this time 🙏🏻,” Grimes wrote.

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