Elon Musk recently shared a touching personal connection to India during a podcast with Nikhil Kamath.
In a moment that’s melting hearts across India, global tech titan Elon Musk revealed a deep personal connection to the country during his riveting chat with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath on the “People by WTF” podcast. The Tesla and SpaceX visionary shared that his partner, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, is half-Indian, and that one of their sons bears the middle name “Sekhar” – a loving tribute to the legendary Indian-American Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, said a Fortune India report.
Musk’s exact words on the podcast:
“I’m not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half Indian.”
When Kamath expressed surprise (“I did not know that”), Musk beamed: “Yes, and one of my sons with her… his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar.” Diving deeper into Zilis’s roots, Musk explained her unique story: “She was given up for adoption when she was a baby. I think her father was an exchange student at a university or something like that. I’m not sure of the exact details, but she grew up in Canada.”
This ancestral tie to India – through her father’s exchange student days – adds a poetic layer to the power couple’s bond, blending Canadian upbringing with desi heritage.
Honoring India’s Scientific Giant
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Tamil Nadu-born astrophysicist who fled to the US amid colonial hardships, won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work on stellar evolution – the very “Chandrasekhar limit” that defines how massive stars collapse into black holes. Naming their son after him? It’s Musk’s ultimate salute to Indian intellect, echoing his frequent praise for the subcontinent’s talent. (Zilis and Musk share four children: twins Strider and Azure (2021), daughter Arcadia (2024), and son Seldon Lycurgus – with “Sekhar” as the middle name for one of the boys.)
Family, Future, and the ‘Roman Legion’ Dream
The podcast, already viral for Musk’s takes on AI, H-1B visas (“America has benefited immensely from talented Indians”), and Starlink’s India rollout, turned deeply personal on family matters. Joking about his sprawling brood (14 kids total), Musk quipped: “I’m like an army. I’m trying to get an entire Roman Legion.
“On adoption, he’s pragmatic yet open: “I definitely have my hands full right now. I’m not opposed to it, but I do want to be able to spend some time with my kids – beyond a certain number, it’s kind of impossible.” Musk champions the traditional “one child, one mother, one father” model as what “generally works for most,” but stresses independence: “My older kids are very independent – they’re in university.
Especially sons: after a certain age, they’re very independent. Most boys don’t spend a lot of time with their parents after 18.”
The Bigger Philosophy: Fighting Population Decline for Cosmic Consciousness
Musk’s core worry? Humanity’s shrinking numbers. “It’s a big problem. I don’t want humanity to disappear,” he warned, framing it as an existential threat. “If the trend continues, we disappear. Also, going back to my philosophy – we want to expand consciousness. Fewer humans means less consciousness.”
Pressed on whether more people equals more smarts, Musk drew a brilliant analogy: “Yes. Just as consciousness increases from a single-cell creature to a 30-trillion-cell creature, we’re more conscious than bacteria. A larger human population means more consciousness overall. We’re more likely to understand the universe’s nature with more people than with fewer.” On nature vs. nurture, he rejects the binary: “The kid is half you genetically, and growing up around you adds environmental learning. So, yes, children end up being part you from a hardware standpoint, and part you from a software standpoint.” He likens the brain to a “biological computer,” where genetics provide the “circuitry” and upbringing the “efficiency.”
