Elon Musk reveals partner Shivon Zilis’ Indian roots and said that their son is named after legendary Indian scientist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has revealed that his partner, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, is half-Indian and that one of their sons bears the middle name ‘Sekhar,’ named after Indian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.ย
Appearing on Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath’s “WTF is?” podcast, the billionaire said, “I’m not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half Indian,” Musk said, adding, “One of my sons with her, his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar.”
S Chandrasekhar was a renowned Indian-American astrophysicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 “for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars”.
Elon Musk’s partner Shivon Zilis’s India connectionย
When asked whether Zilis had ever lived in India, Musk clarified that her connection is ancestral, not cultural. He said, “She grew up in Canada. She was given up for adoption when she was a baby. I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that,” Musk said.
“I’m not sure the exact details, but you know it was kind of thing where I don’t know, she was given up for adoption. But she grew up in Canada,” he added.
Zilis is a long-time tech and artificial intelligence professional. She joined Neuralink in 2017 and is currently the company’s director of operations and special projects.
According to USA Today, she was raised in Ontario and studied economics and philosophy at Yale University. Her career includes roles at IBM, Bloomberg, and the venture-capital firm Bloomberg Beta before joining Musk’s Neuralink.
Zilis has four children with Elon Musk โ twins Strider and Azure (born 2021), daughter Arcadia (born 2024), and their youngest son, Seldon Lycurgus.ย Musk has other children with additional partners.
US ‘immensely’ benefited by hiring ‘talented’ Indians: Musk
Elon Musk, who was once a close aide of US President Donald Trump, has said that the United States has ‘immensely’ benefited by hiring ‘talented’ Indians over the decades. The Tesla chief executive officer’s (CEO) remarks come amid the ongoing row over the H-1B visa programme and immigration in the US.ย
The Tesla CEO said that some of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies were triggered by the ‘misuse’ of the H-1B visa programme. However, he suggested that the programme should not be shut down.ย ย
“I think there’s been some misuse of the, you know, H-1B programme. It would be accurate to say that there’s, you know, like some of the outsourcing companies have kind of gamed the system on the H-1B front, and we need to stop the gaming of the system. But I’m certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H1B programme,” he said.
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