With Tesla’s profits in freefall, ‘haters’ setting fire to his electric cars and a senior White House colleague describing him as the ‘most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with’, Elon Musk cannot be feeling his usual bumptious self.

He’s reportedly had screaming matches with White House cabinet members over his high-handed antics and even Donald Trump was last week talking about Musk’s time in his administration in the past tense.

Insiders say the President realises that the man who called himself his ‘First Buddy’ has become a serious political liability as the slash-and-burn boss of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

So when Musk, 53, announced last Tuesday he was ‘significantly’ stepping back next month from his government role, it came as no surprise to Washington-watchers.

It’s traditional for people in Musk’s position to save face by saying that they want to spend more time with their family but, in his case, that would raise the question: which one exactly?

For he has at least four families that we know of and reportedly wants many more. Insiders have revealed how Musk is determined to expand a ‘harem’ of attractive, bright and usually conservative young women to keep churning out his offspring for what his planet-sized ego tells him will be the salvation of humanity.

The mercurial and eccentric Musk, the world’s richest person, has fathered at least 14 children with four women, many of them through IVF. He is convinced that ‘civilisation is going to crumble’ unless people – especially highly intelligent people (like him) – start having more children.

Elon Musk, 53, announced last Tuesday he was ‘significantly’ stepping back next month from his government role, it came as no surprise to Washington-watchers (Pictured last year with President Trump)

People close to him say that the true number of Musk’s children is actually ‘much higher than publicly known’.

His estranged transgender daughter Vivian last month claimed she didn’t know how many half-siblings she has.

Vivian, 20, also said that Musk prefers to use IVF so he can select the baby’s sex – consequently nearly all of them are boys.

He also selects their outlandish names. As well as six children (one of whom died in infancy) with his first wife, writer Justine Wilson, Musk has three – X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl and Tau Techno Mechanicus – with Canadian singer Grimes (real name Claire Boucher).

He has another four – Strider, Azure, Arcadia and Seldon Lycurgus – with Shivon Zilis, a senior executive at his neurotechnology company Neuralink.

And that was officially assumed to be the lot… until in February, a New York-based conservative writer and online influencer named Ashley St Clair announced on social media that she’d secretly had his child, a boy named Romulus, five months earlier.

St Clair, 26, went to court, accusing Musk of refusing to take a paternity test and asking her not to put his name on the baby’s birth certificate. Earlier this month, a court-ordered lab test revealed a 99.9999 per cent likelihood of Musk being the father.

She claims Musk has been minimally involved in the child’s life and slashed his financial support to punish her for revealing his paternity.

A rabid tweeter on his social media site X, Musk is happy for the world to know his trenchant views on pretty much everything – the big exception being his private life.

Musk has fathered five children with ex-wife Justine Musk (pictured). She is his first ex-wife and they were married from 2000 to 2008

Shivon Zilis, current director of Musk’s company Neuralink, is mother to twins Strider and Azure by Musk via IVF who were born in 2021 (pictured) and two other children born in 2024 and 2025. The most recent baby is confirmed to have been by IVF

Here, according to St Clair, he spends millions on non-disclosure agreements and payouts to various women in a bid to keep them quiet about the children he’s sired.