Elon Musk Broke Up Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Marriage

This story has everything: a brief affair, Art Basel, begging for forgiveness, unimaginable amounts of money that should be heavily taxed and redistributed.

By Nora Biette-Timmons  |  July 24, 2022 | 10:35pm
CelebritiesMisc. Goss
Elon Musk Broke Up Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin’s Marriage
Me trying to make this add up. (Also Elon Musk at the Met Gala in May.) Photo:Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan (Getty Images)

While we at Jezebel have previously speculated that he has a breeding kink, the latest Elon Musk news provides a different spin on the richest man in the world’s um, conjugal life. (No, this isn’t about the twins he secretly fathered last year with an executive at one of his companies.) On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk hooked up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife in December, which prompted Brin to file for divorce first thing in the new year, citing the old chestnut “irreconcilable differences.”

The “liaison,” as the Journal delicately put it, between Musk and Nicole Shanahan reportedly happened at Art Basel in Miami. At the time, Brin and Shanahan were living together but had separated, according to the Journal’s sources, due to “problems in their marriage…primarily because of Covid pandemic shutdowns and the care of their 3-year-old daughter.” (If even tech billionaires can’t escape the burden of pandemic parenting then capitalism is truly done for.)

However, Brin—who, as of publishing, is merely the 10th richest man in the world—didn’t file for divorce until he learned that Shanahan had hooked up with Musk.

There’s so much drama in this story, not the least of which is that Musk and Brin had been buddies for years: the father-of-many would crash at Brin’s megamansion in Silicon Valley when he was in town, and Brin gave Musk $500,000 to help out Tesla during the 2008 financial crisis.

It appears that Musk realized he screwed up, and sometime earlier this year reportedly dropped to one knee at a party, begging Brin for forgiveness.

What I am begging to know is: How did this happen? We all saw the paparazzi pics of Musk on a yacht in Greece last week; there’s nothing wrong with being pale or having minimal muscle definition—not all billionaires went as all-in on the rich-guy glow up as Jeff Bezos—but my brain cannot make “Elon Musk, Casanova” add up (though I’m sure he’s got someone developing an AI that does just that).

Usually Musk’s tweets responding to news stories about him are boring at best, but this time, I’m desperate to know what he’ll say. Forgive me for saying this, y’all, but: Elon, please tweet.

 
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