Google co-founder Sergey Brin filed for divorce after learning that his wife cheated on him with Elon Musk — whose electric-car company Tesla was propped up by Brin during the 2008 financial crisis, according to a bombshell report Sunday.
The two tech titans were longtime friends — with Musk saying that for years he regularly crashed at Brin’s Silicon Valley home — until the Tesla founder’s brief fling with Nicole Shanahan last year, the Wall Street Journal said.
Brin and Shanahan were separated but still living together at the time of the affair in December, a person close to her told the Journal.
Brin, who’s worth $90 billion, filed for divorce in January, citing “irreconcilable differences.”
The filing came several weeks after Brin found out that Shanahan hooked up with the world’s richest man, people familiar with the matter told the Journal.
Brin also ordered his financial advisers to liquidate his investments in Musk’s various companies amid growing tension between the billionaires, sources told the Journal.
In 2008, Brin provided Musk with a $500,000 lifeline for Tesla when it was struggling to increase production amid the Great Recession.
Musk, now worth $253 billion, later rewarded Brin by giving him one of Tesla’s first all-electric SUVs.
Musk, a 51-year-old divorcee, has fathered 10 kids, the first of whom died of sudden infant death syndrome in 2002.
Five of the other kids were also born to Musk’s ex-wife, Justine Wilson.
Musk also fathered two children with Canadian singer Grimes — the second born by a surrogate — and earlier this month, he confirmed having twins with an executive at his brain-chip company Neuralink.
Those kids were born just weeks before his second child with Grimes.
“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” Musk tweeted July 7.
“A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
A lawyer for Brin declined to comment, the Journal said.
Hours after the story was published Sunday, Musk claimed in a tweet that his encounters with Shanahan were “nothing romantic” and he remained friends with Brin.
A spokeswoman for Shanahan, who runs a foundation that’s focused in part on extending female fertility, did not respond to requests for comment, the Journal said.
