Elon Musk secretly became a father to twins at the end of last year, increasing the number of his children to nine. The 51-year-old now explains on social media that he wants to counteract the “collapsing birth rate”.

Tesla boss Elon Musk is said to have become the father of twins as early as November 2021. This is said to emerge from court documents available to Business Insider. Now the businessman has personally spoken out about the rumors via Twitter for the first time.

“I’m doing my best to fight the underpopulation crisis,” writes the 51-year-old ironically, obviously alluding to the supposed baby news. It goes on to say: “A collapsing birth rate is by far the greatest threat to civilization.”

According to Business Insider, the mother of his secret twins is said to be Shivon Zilis, one of Musk’s top executives. She works at Neuralink, a neurotechnology company researching connections between the brain and computers. The children are said to have been born just weeks before Musk and singer Grimes’ second child was born. However, there is no official confirmation so far.

The 51-year-old has a large family anyway – with and without twins. The tech billionaire is officially a father of seven: he has five sons with his first wife, the Canadian writer Justine Musk, to whom he was married from 2000 to 2008. However, the couple’s firstborn child died in infancy.

Musk has been in a relationship with Grimes since 2018. In addition to daughter Exa Dark Sideræl, who was carried to a surrogate mother in December 2021, they also have son X Æ A-Xii.