Elon Musk denied claims Sunday evening that he had an affair with the wife of one of the world’s top 10 richest men late last year which caused the couple to get divorced and ended the “longtime” friendship between the two men.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk “engaged in a brief affair last fall with the wife of Sergey Brin” in early December 2021 at the Art Basel event in Miami. Brin, co-founder of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is the world’s eighth richest man, worth nearly $95 billion. The company also owns Android and YouTube.
The alleged affair caused Brin to file for divorce from wife Nicole Shanahan earlier this year and has ended the friendship between the two men.
“This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!” Musk responded on Twitter. “I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.”
“WSJ has run so many bs hit pieces on me and Tesla I’ve lost count! It’s embarrassing for them, frankly,” Musk continued. “They once wrote an article saying FBI was about to arrest me, so I called FBI to ask what’s up and they said WSJ article was total bs. Just more shortseller fud.”
Musk said that “character assassination attacks” on him have reached “a new level this year” but claimed that they were all “nothing-burgers” and that he did not even have enough time to get in trouble.
“WSJ is supposed to have a high standard for journalism and, right now, they are way sub tabloid,” he added. “WSJ should be running stories that actually matter to their readers and have solid factual basis, not third-party random hearsay.”
The report noted that Musk and Brin were so close at one point that Musk had regularly slept at Brin’s home and Brin had loaned Musk money at one point when Tesla was struggling during its early days.
The report said that Musk “dropped to one knee in front of Brin and apologized profusely for the transgression” during a party earlier this year and was “begging for forgiveness.” The report said that Brin acknowledged the apology but he is not speaking with Musk and he has ordered his team to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies.
Musk’s personal life has come under this year after a female flight attendant at one of his companies accused him of exposing himself to her, which he denies; his alleged fathering of two children with an executive at his company Neuralink, his dad fathering a second child with his stepsister, and one of his children publicly disowning him.
The issues in Musk’s personal life come as he is facing litigation surrounding his attempt to back out of buying Twitter, which he purchased earlier this year for $44 billion.
This report has been updated to include additional information.