Elon Musk reveals surprising India connection on Nikhil Kamath's podcast

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has revealed an unexpected India connection in his family, saying his partner Shivon Zilis is “half-Indian” and that one of their children carries a middle name inspired by an Indian-American.

In conversation with Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath, Musk revealed one of his sons' names to be inspired by Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

“One of my sons with her is, his middle name is Sekhar, after Chandrasekhar,” Musk said during a conversation with investor and entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his show People by WTF.


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Chandrasekhar, an Indian-American astrophysicist, won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars”.

When asked whether Zilis had ever spent time in India, Musk said her early life story was not widely known. “She was given up for adoption when she was a baby and grew up in Canada. I think her father was like an exchange student at the university, or something like that. I'm not sure of the exact details, but, just kind of thing where I don't know... she was given up for adoption,” he said.

Musk and Zilis have four children, twins Strider and Azure, daughter Arcadia and son Seldon Lycurgus. Zilis serves as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-tech company.

Musk is all praises for Indian talent

Amid ongoing discussions about immigration policies and the importance of attracting global talent, Musk also acknowledged the significant contributions of Indian talent to the United States. “I think America has benefited immensely from talented Indians who have come to America. I mean, America's been an immense beneficiary of talent from India,” he said.

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Musk highlighted the need for balanced immigration policies, while criticising the Biden administration’s approach. “I think there are different schools of thought. It's not unanimous, but under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with like no border controls. Unless you've got border controls. So you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden, and actually, it also had like somewhat of a negative selection effect,” he said.

He added that open borders could allow even criminals to enter the US. “If there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're going to necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US. It's an incentive structure that obviously made no sense. Like, you got to have border controls. It's kind of ridiculous not to. Then that's what the left wants to basically have: open borders. It doesn't matter if someone knows what the situation is; it could be a criminal- doesn't matter,” Musk said.