- Tesla CEO Elon Musk and musician Grimes have been dating since 2018, when they made their debut as a couple at the annual Met Gala.
- The couple has weathered ups and downs, like Musk’s infamous “funding secured” tweet.
- Now, Grimes and Musk have had their first child together, a baby boy.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Elon Musk and the musician Grimes took both the business and music worlds by surprise in May 2018 when they revealed they were dating.
Since then, the couple has weathered ups and downs, and possibly even a breakup. In February, Grimes revealed she was pregnant, and has now given birth to a baby boy – almost exactly two years after she and Musk announced their relationship.
Here’s a look at how their relationship has progressed since the beginning.
Sean Wolfe contributed to an earlier version of this story.
Claire Boucher, better known by her stage name, Grimes, is a Canadian singer and producer. She's also an outspoken advocate for female artists and their treatment by the press and music industry. She's released multiple albums to critical acclaim, and her breakout album, "Visions," won the Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year.
Source: Juno Awards, Business Insider
Grimes and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, met over Twitter. Musk was planning to make a joke about artificial intelligence — specifically, about the Rococo Basilisk character in her "Flesh Without Blood" video — and discovered she had beaten him to the punch.
Source: Twitter
In May 2018, shortly before the annual Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Page Six reported that the pair had been "quietly dating" for a few weeks. The report announced that the couple planned to attend the Met Gala together, and that they had been tweeting at each other for a few months.
Source: Page Six
Grimes and Musk did end up attending the Met Gala together, which was their first official appearance as a couple. Musk later told The Wall Street Journal that he loves Grimes for her "wild fae artistic creativity and hyper intense work ethic."
Source: The Wall Street Journal
News of their relationship spurred plenty of memes, as many fans were caught by surprise. Both Grimes and Musk have loyal fanbases who are active online, so there were no shortage of jokes after their relationship was announced.
Elon Musk and Grimes make their debut at the Met Gala pic.twitter.com/plAvt2xvc6
— dead account (@maskritual) May 8, 2018
Source: Vice
Someone even made a Google Chrome extension that replaced all instances of "Elon Musk" on a webpage with "Grimes' Boyfriend."
https://twitter.com/chillmage/status/994306139444711424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Source: The Verge
Since then, Grimes has taken to Twitter several times to defend Musk and Tesla. In since-deleted tweets, Grimes said Musk has never tried to stop Tesla workers from unionizing and claims she encouraged a union vote among Tesla employees.
Source: Business Insider
Grimes has also attended official events with Musk, like the Hyperloop Pod Competition in July 2018. She and Musk, along with his five sons, made an unscheduled appearance at the event.
— David Harvey (@HumansOfLate) July 25, 2018
Source: Business Insider
That same month, after it was revealed that Musk has made donations to Republican political committees, Grimes defended his choice, calling it "the price of doing business." After her tweets began to receive some backlash, she added that "there is no world in which i'm ok w republican donations.."
Source: Jezebel
That August, Musk sent this now infamous tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." He later admitted he picked the $420 share price as a joke to amuse Grimes, according to the SEC.
Musk and Tesla eventually settled with the SEC over the tweet, agreeing to pay $20 million each. Musk also agreed to step down as chairman of Tesla's board and appoint a committee to oversee his communications.
Source: Business Insider
Rapper Azealia Banks claimed to be at Elon Musk's house in Los Angeles during that weekend while he was "scrounging for investors" following his tweet. She compared the situation as something out of the movie "Get Out."
Banks posted on Instagram about the ordeal, saying "I waited around all weekend while grimes coddled her boyfriend." According to the rapper, she and Grimes had planned to collaborate on some upcoming music, so she had flown to where Grimes was staying.
"They bring me out there on the premise that we would hang and make music," Banks told Business Insider at the time. "But his dumb--- kept tweeting and tucked his d--- in between his a-- cheeks once s--- hit the fan."
Musk denied he had ever met or communicated with Banks.
Later that summer, Musk and Grimes unfollowed each other on Instagram, and Musk unfollowed Grimes on Twitter, which caused some to speculate that their relationship was on the rocks.
Source: Business Insider
But by October, it appeared that they had reconnected: they were spotted at a pumpkin patch in Los Angeles with Musk's five sons. Musk also re-followed Grimes on Twitter.
Source: Business Insider
A few months later, in January 2019, Grimes tweeted that she was "randomly" in China at the same time as Musk was opening Tesla's new factory in Shanghai. The two were filmed eating a meal together in Beijing.
Source: Business Insider, Daily Mail
Grimes described Musk as "a super-interesting goddamn person" in a Wall Street Journal profile in March.
Source: Wall Street Journal
In November, Grimes may have even made an appearance at the unveiling of Tesla's highly anticipated Cybertruck: the "cybergirl" hologram who unveiled the truck sported a seemingly identical leg tattoo as the one Grimes has. Many speculated the hologram was actually Grimes, although that hasn't been confirmed.
Source: Business Insider
A few weeks later, the couple was spotted cruising around Los Angeles in the Cybertruck, stopping to grab dinner at high-end Japanese restaurant Nobu.
Source: The Cut
When Grimes performed at the 2019 Game Awards in December, Musk was in the audience, even giving her a standing ovation.
Source: Business Insider
The couple stopped by the annual Kardashian-Jenner family Christmas Eve party, posing for a photo with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and rappers Travis Scott, Quavo, and Saweetie.
Then, in January, Grimes dropped a bombshell: she posted a nude photo to her Instagram and Twitter accounts that showed her pregnant with a fetus Photoshopped on her belly. The post didn't include a caption, but in a comment on the post, Grimes appeared to imply that she was, in fact, pregnant.
Source: Business Insider
Grimes later confirmed that she was expecting a baby. She said in February that the internet has already guessed some of the names she was considering for her child.
Source: Twitch, Business Insider
During a livestream on Twitch in February to promote her new album, "Miss Anthropocene," Grimes revealed that the baby's due date was May 4.
Source: Twitch
In a March Rolling Stone interview, Grimes confirmed for the first time that she and Musk were having the baby together. Days before Grimes' due date, Musk acknowledged the pregnancy on Twitter.
Source: Rolling Stone, Business Insider
On the evening of May 4, Musk announced on Twitter that the baby was born, saying "Mom & baby all good." In follow-up tweets, Musk wrote that the couple has a baby boy. One Twitter user asked Musk the name of their child, to which he responded, "X Æ A-12 Musk."
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2020
Source: Business Insider
