Elon Musk denied having an affair with the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, which the Wall Street Journal reported earlier Sunday has created a widening rift between the tech moguls, two of the richest people in the world.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the Journal said Brin called off his investments in Elon Musk’s companies after discovering that the Tesla billionaire had a brief liaison with his wife, Nicole Shanahan in December 2021. Musk tweeted late on Sunday that the report was untrue, that he had just seen Brin at a party, and that he had “nothing romantic” with Shanahan.
The Journal said the alleged affair took place in December and prompted Brin to file for divorce in early January. The couple was reportedly separated at the time. According to the Journal, Brin told his financial advisers to sell off all of his investments in Elon Musk companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.
Brin cited “irreconcilable differences” in his divorce filing.
On Sunday, Musk denied having an affair with Shanahan, tweeting: “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.”
Brin, a board member of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, previously invested $500,000 into Tesla in 2008. According to The New York Times, Google and Fidelity invested $1 billion in SpaceX in 2015.
The Journal has not obtained information regarding the size of potential other investments “or whether there have been any sales.”
Musk is the richest person in the world, worth an estimated $240 billion, while Brin ranks eighth, with $95 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk will also head to court in October for trying to call off the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which he agreed to in April. The suit aims to force the sale and “compel Musk to fulfill his legal obligations, and to compel consummation of the merger upon satisfaction of the few outstanding conditions.”
The deal’s initial announcement sparked controversy regarding what the media mogul’s leadership might mean for the app. Media Matters for America, a liberal non-profit watchdog group, warned that Musk’s ownership “will open the floodgates of misinformation, hate and lies.”