Google co-founder Sergey Brin filed for divorce over his wife Nicole Shanahan's affair with Elon Musk in December 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported , citing sources familiar with the matter. However, Musk himself claims that this is not true and he is still friends with Brin.

Brin and Musk have had a "strained" relationship in recent months, one of the newspaper's sources said, and Brin even instructed his financial advisers to sell Tesla shares. In 2008, Brin invested $500,000 in the company. The newspaper also claims that during the romance between Shanahan and Musk, Brin and his wife had already decided to divorce, but the couple continued to live together. Marriage difficulties arose from the stress of the pandemic and raising a three-year-old daughter, sources said. Musk himself at the time of the novel broke up with the singer Grimes.

Musk denied the publication's reports on Twitter:

“This is complete nonsense. Sergey and I are friends and last night we were together at a party! I only saw Nicole twice in three years, both times with a large group of people. Nothing romantic."

Musk later added that the WSJ should publish other stories.

“Assumed the WSJ held high standards of journalism instead of becoming a tabloid. The WSJ should publish stories that are genuinely important to their readers and based on facts, not random third party rumors."

Musk has been married three times. From his first marriage he has six children: a son, twin boys and triplets. There were no children in the second marriage, in the third marriage with the Canadian singer Grimes they had a son - "X Æ A-12" - and a daughter, Exa Dark Syderil. In September 2021, Musk and Grimes separated after three years of marriage.