Elon Musk reveals details about his new baby with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis - his 12th child - after he was accused of keeping the birth a secret

Elon Musk has confirmed he recently had a third baby with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, who works for his brain implant company.

Musk, 52, was accused of keeping the birth of the child - his 12th overall - a secret, after news of the birth was made public through media reports.

The billionaire businessman says there was never any intention to keep it under wraps, but that putting out a press release would also have been 'bizarre', although the baby's name and gender have not been revealed.

'As for "secretly fathered," that is also false. All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean "secret"', Musk said to Page Six, about the birth.

The baby, believed to have been born earlier this year, was mentioned for the first time in a report by Bloomberg entitled 'Elon Wants You to Have More Babies'.

The article discusses the X and Tesla owner's previously shared concerns over declining population rates.

'A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far,' he has tweeted in the past.

Musk is a fanatic when it comes to a possibly ‘population collapse’ which he believes is a bigger risk to the world than global warming .

This was apparent in a recent exchange on X between Musk and the Netherlands’ hard-Right leader, Geert Wilders, in which the Dutch politician warned of a collapse of Western values in his country thanks to open borders, a stance shared by other EU populists.

‘Agreed,’ responded Musk. ‘But if the birth rate stays as low as it is [1.6] your Dutch nation will die out by its own hand.'

'Many countries are already well below the replacement rate, and the trend indicates that almost all will be. This is simply a fact, not a 'debunked theory,' Musk has said previously.

'2.1 kids is the replacement rate, and it's clear that globally we will soon fall below that point.'

In a 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk shared similar views.

'Once you have birth control and abortions and whatnot, now you can still satisfy the limbic instinct but not procreate. Will civilization end with a bang or a whimper? Well, it’s currently trying to end with a whimper in adult diapers, which is depressing as hell,' he said.

The U.S. Census Bureau disagrees with such views noting that the world’s population is not in decline.

100 years ago there were 2 billion people alive with the number topping 8 billion last year.

Data from the United Nations projects the figure will continue rising to 10 billion by the year 2100 - and even there is unlikely to be any collapse.

Musk and Zilis, who works as Neuralink Corp.’s director of special projects, already share two-and-a-half-year-old twins Strider and Azure who were born in November 2021. The pair have featured in several of Zilis' social media posts.

Musk's complicated personal life has involved three marriages and three divorces, including two of each with the same woman, as well as eight children from two long-term romances plus the twins with Zilis they conceived via in vitro fertilization.

Aside from his three children with Zilis, also shares three with musician Grimes.

Grimes is currently in a legal battle with Musk and is suing him over parental rights to their three kids.

Last September, a feud broke out with Grimes accusing the SpaceX founder of preventing her from seeing her son, and Neuralink director Shivon Zilis - mother to two of Musk's children - of blocking her on social media.

But the pair appear to have buried the hatchet with Grimes saying she was 'excited to become friends' with Zilis and have their 'kids grow up together.'

Grimes wrote on X at the time: 'Women are so often pitted against each other. Speaking with Shivon, it's very evident she's an amazing human and we both just want what's best for our kids,'

Zilis called Grimes a 'badass' in response and said their lengthy conversation, during which the air was cleared, had been 'insanely overdue.'

Elon started dating Grimes in April 2018. The eccentric couple captured headlines when they made their red carpet debut at the Met Gala the following month.

Nevertheless, Musk has been seen with his four-year-old son, X (born X Æ A-12 in May 2020), at various events, including the Super Bowl in Las Vegas.

Their second child Exa Dark Sideræl, who is called Y, was born via surrogate in December 2021.

Musk's other children are the result of his union with his first ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson.

The couple share twins Griffin and Xavier, born in 2004, and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian with his ex-wife.

Xavier - now 20 - has since transitioned genders to become female. She is called Vivian and has dropped her father's famous surname - after telling a court that she 'no longer wishes to be related' to him 'in any way.'

Musk and Wilson's eldest child, Nevada, tragically passed away aged just 10 weeks from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in 2002.

Zilis, who was born in Ontario, Canada , met Musk through OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk co-founded in 2015, Insider reported.

Zilis has been Musk's 'intellectual companion on artificial intelligence since the founding of OpenAI.'

In 2015, Zilis was on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category and in 2017, joined Musk's brain chip company Neuralink as the director of operations and special projects, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She studied economics and philosophy at Yale where she also played goalie on the women's ice-hockey team.

Musk and Zilis filed a petition in April 2022 to change the twins' names in order to 'have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name,' according to the court documents.