Has Elon Musk surpassed Mick Jagger and Nick Cannon as celebrity’s most fertile man?

It looks like Elon Musk may want to be known as something more than the world’s richest man.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO appeared to confirm a Business Insider report Wednesday that he had welcomed a new set of twins with an executive at one of his companies in November, bringing to 10 the total number of children that Musk has fathered with three different women since the early 2000s.

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” Musk tweeted Thursday. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

But beyond Musk’s proclamation about helping civilization, he can also claim bragging rights in the world of rich and famous fathers. With the twins, Musk becomes joins Mick Jagger and Nick Cannon as one of the most prodigious male celebrities when it comes to producing large numbers of offspring with different wives and girlfriends. Shortly after Musk welcomed his twins, he and his ex-girlfriend Grimes welcomed the birth of their second child, a daughter, via surrogate.

One could say that actors Eddie Murphy and Mel Gibson are just as prodigious in this category. Murphy has fathered 10 children with five different women, while Mel Gibson has produced nine children through two marriages and a relationship that became famously contentious.

Other famous men known for spreading their DNA around include Mick Jagger and Nick Cannon. Mick Jagger is the father of eight children with five different women, including socialite Bianca Jagger and model Jerry Hall. The Rolling Stones frontman also hasn’t let age slow him down. He was was 73 when ballet dancer Melanie Hamrick gave birth to his eighth child, a son, in 2016.

Meanwhile, Cannon, the actor, rapper and TV host, had the first of his nine children in 2011 with singer Mariah Carey, to whom he was married for six years. Starting in 2017, Cannon began to rapidly grow his brood with four different women. Sadly, in 2021, his seventh child, a son named Zen with model Alyssa Scott, died of brain cancer at five months old.

This January, Cannon announced he was expecting a son, his eighth child, with model Bre Tiesi. TMZ also reported last month that Cannon is expecting his ninth, due in October, with DJ Abby De La Rosa. Cannon and De La Rosa already are parents to twin boys, born in June 2021.

Over the July 4 weekend, Cannon offered up a freestyle rap to address questions about his parenting choices, The Cut reported. 

“I gotta say something to all of my kids / Your daddy gonna love you whatever it is / Your mama a blessing / No question she is,” Cannon rapped during an appearance on Power 106 FM. He also acknowledged the challenges of parenting with different partners in a clip of his freestyle that he posted to Instagram. He rapped: “All of my children will always be friends / Even if they mamas is not in agreeance / Cannon’s the gang, and we in allegiance.”

But perhaps Musk would say that men like Cannon, Jagger, Gibson and Murphy should be congratulated for helping to reverse declining birth rates. On Thursday, the billionaire tweeted: “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”

I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022

Musk first began having children in 2002 with his first wife, Justine Wilson. Sadly, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks. Musk and Wilson went on to have five more children: twins born in 2004, followed by triplets in 2006.

In 2018, Musk and Grimes revealed that they were dating, and the musician gave birth to their eccentrically named son, X AE A-XII, in May 2020. In March, Grimes revealed to Vanity Fair that they had welcomed a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl in December, via surrogate, while also sharing that the couple had broken up but remain friends.

The mother of Musk’s new twins is Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, according to Business Insider and CNN. Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment, so the nature of his relationship with Zilis, 36, isn’t known — beyond them becoming parents together.

CNN reported that their professional ties go back to at least to 2016, when she became an adviser to OpenAI. Musk is one of the cofounders of OpenAI, a nonprofit research laboratory with a stated mission to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” CNN said.

Musk first expressed concern about America’s birth rate in May. On his Twitter account, he pinned a tweet linking a Wall Street Journal article about how the U.S. fertility rate in 2021 remained below the “replacement level” of 2.1.

USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years pic.twitter.com/v5PSLbvEAE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2022