Singer Grimes posted, then deleted, a tweet on Wednesday asking Elon Musk to let her see her son, sparking speculation and online rumors about the situation. The tweet came in response to two photos posted by Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, who recently published an article in Time about Musk’s involvement in AI.
One of the photos, which are included in the Time article, shows Musk with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain-chip company Neuralink who Isaacson describes as his “intellectual companion.” Musk has two children, Strider and Azure, with Zillis.
The other photo shows Musk with his son X, who Grimes gave birth to in 2020. Grimes and Musk have a second child, known as Y, who was born by surrogacy.
“Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer. I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite this situation utterly ripping my family apart,” Grimes tweeted.
Grimes’ fans on the r/Grimes subreddit discussed the posts and what the story behind them might be.
“this man really ruined her life in every aspect,” commented u/Sure_Wallaby_1970.
Other Redditors questioned why Grimes used the phrasing “these children” when publicly the only child that’s hers in the pictures is X, leading to rampant, unevidenced speculation.
“Did elon take one or more of grimes’ fetuses or eggs and have them implanted in Shivon’s surrogate? Is that why Grimes is saying “Let me see my son?”” asked u/Off_OuterLimits. “Is Grimes talking about Shivon using her eggs that Elon took from Grimes to have them implanted in Shivon’s surrogate? They both had surrogates at the same time. This is the only thing that makes sense.”
There’s been no public information released that Zillis’ children were conceived using Grimes’ eggs.
Reuters reported last August that Zillis told some of her colleagues that she’d conceived her children with Musk by IVF, but the outlet couldn’t confirm her account.
Grimes’ second child with Musk was conceived by surrogate, according to a Vanity Fair article that revealed the child’s existence when the interviewer heard the baby crying upstairs.
Redditors also discussed posts by both Zillis and Grimes about how hard August had been for them and speculated that the only common denominator was Musk.
“Maybe this is tmi, I’m just totally incapable of continuing to pretend that the situation has been remotely ok or that I’m not on my last legs and beyond mentally totally destroyed by what’s been going on in my personal life,” Grimes posted on Aug. 24. “It’s deeply effected my work obviously. As much as I’d love to drop the video, I think I gotta figure out family and health over the next few weeks.”
“This has been by far the hardest month of my life,” Zillis posted on Aug. 29. “I wanted to say thank you to all the friends who have been there for me. I appreciate you more than anything in the world.”
Other users shared a rumor that Grimes was raising their female daughter Y, while Musk was raising X, the son.
“There’s some bizarre fucking tea about how Grimes agreed to have a second kid with him but her conditions were that it be by IVF and surrogate (because she almost died from being pregnant the first time),” wrote u/Taraxian, “that it be female and that she take the lead raising the daughter and Elon take the lead raising the son.”
