Another one: Musk's alleged affair with Google founder's wife

Elon Musk dropped to one knee at a party to bed for the Sergey Brin's forgiveness.

Elon Musk dropped to one knee at a party to bed for the Sergey Brin's forgiveness.

Elon Musk has been accused of having an affair with the wife of the Google co-founder Sergey Brin - a long-time friend - prompting fresh scrutiny of the personal life of the world’s richest man.

The Tesla boss is alleged to have engaged in a fleeting liaison with Nicole Shanahan last December.

Brin filed for divorce from Shanahan in January, citing irreconcilable differences.

He did so several weeks after learning of the incident, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources. They said the affair took place during the Art Basel festival, which draws artists and affluent collectors to Miami Beach in Florida, each year.

Nicole Shanahan and Sergey Brin in 2019. Picture: Ian Tuttle/Getty Images

Musk, 51, and Brin, 48, have been close friends and corporate allies for years.

Brin supplied Tesla with hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding when the electric carmaker was under pressure in 2008 and was said to have been one of the first customers to take delivery of its Model X SUV in 2015. However, the friendship has since suffered, the Journal said, detailing how Musk had dropped to one knee before Brin at a party, apologising and begging for forgiveness.

Brin has ordered his financial advisers to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies, people familiar with the relationship said.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment, nor did attorneys for Brin and Shanahan, who is believed to be aged 37.

However he did take to social media to deny the claims.

"This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night! I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic," Musk tweeted.

This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!

I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2022

Musk, as chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, the rockets and satellites group, has become one of the world’s most powerful executives. His personal fortune, estimated by Forbes at $366m, is derived largely from vast stakes in these businesses.

He has had to fend off significant interest in his personal life in recent months. In May he was accused of exposing himself to a flight attendant on a private aircraft, a claim he has denied. The allegation appeared on the Insider news website, which also reported that he had fathered twins with one of his executives in November, weeks before having a child with Grimes, the singer. Musk responded on Twitter that he was “doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis”.

Scrutiny of his private life intensified in May after he said he would buy Twitter for $64 billion, prompting him to write on the social network that “political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months”.

Brin, who set up Google with Larry Page in 1998, is one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, with a personal fortune of dollars 90 billion. He stepped down as president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in 2019, but remains on the board of directors.

It emerged in 2019 that he had married Shanahan, now president of the Bia-Echo Foundation, a philanthropic organisation. They have a child together.

“I hope for Sergey and I to move forward with dignity, honesty and harmony for the sake of our child,” she told Puck, a news website, this month. “We are both working towards that.”

Musk faces a legal showdown with Twitter in October after trying to abandon his purchase of the social media platform.

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