Back in June, people learned that Google co-founder Sergey Brin had filed for divorce from his wife of three years, Nicole Shanahan. They have a two-year-old daughter together, and the reporting at the time indicated that Brin and Shanahan had actually been separated since January of this year. Brin cited “irreconcilable differences” and that was about it. There’s been little to no drama about the divorce from what I’ve seen – while Brin is one of the richest people on earth and he has famous friends, he’s not a regular in the gossip press at all. The divorce was seen as more like some interesting tech/market gossip. Enter Elon Musk.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin filed for divorce from his wife Nicole Shanahan after discovering she allegedly had an affair with Tesla founder Elon Musk last year. The two tech billionaires are no longer friends.
Brin and Musk both rank in the top ten richest people in the world and the pair have a long history in Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal wrote that in 2008, during financial crisis, Brin gave Musk roughly $500,000 for Tesla, while in 2015, Musk gifted Brin with one of Tesla’s first all-electric sport-utility vehicles.
“I hope for Sergey and I to move forward with dignity, honesty and harmony for the sake of our child. And we are both working towards that,” Shanahan said. Brin filed for divorce from Shanahan in January.
A lawyer for Brin declined to comment to the Journal; Musk and a spokeswoman for Shanahan didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Gross. Just… why??? While I have no doubt that Elon Musk is a complete sleaze who probably slides up to any woman in his path, why would Nicole “risk it all” for g–damn Elon Musk? You risk it all for Chris Pine. You risk it all for Michael B. Jordan. You don’t risk it all for ELON MUSK. Also: note that this story originated in the Wall Street Journal.
If this story isn’t gross enough, Musk decided to tweet through the drama. He denied the story, writing: “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…Haven’t even had sex in ages (sigh).” I can’t.
Shirtless Elon Musk vacations in Mykonos on luxury yacht https://t.co/B1Ybypc2JW pic.twitter.com/URvWlYAgDj
— New York Post (@nypost) July 18, 2022
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – SEPTEMBER 25: Nicole Shanahan and husband/Co-Founder of Google/Alphabet Sergey Brin arrive at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Opening Gala held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on September 25, 2021 in Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 634411543, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Nicole Shanahan, Sergey Brin, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- (FILE) Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Files For Divorce From Nicole Shanahan. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – SEPTEMBER 25: American author Nicole Shanahan and husband/Co-Founder of Google/Alphabet Sergey Brin arrive at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Opening Gala held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on September 25, 2021 in Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 634411559, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Nicole Shanahan, Sergey Brin, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277550, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277560, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277574, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City,Image: 688277583, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Elon Musk, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- (FILE) Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Files For Divorce From Nicole Shanahan. MOUNTAIN VIEW, SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, USA – DECEMBER 04: American author Nicole Shanahan and boyfriend/President of Alphabet/Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin arrive at the 2017 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony held at the NASA Ames Research Center on December 4, 2016 in Mountain View, Santa Clara, California, United States.,Image: 700801666, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Nicole Shanahan, Sergey Brin, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- New York, NY – Elon Musk attends the 2022 Met Gala in NYC. Pictured: Elon Musk BACKGRID USA 2 MAY 2022 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
I hate to body shame, but I kinda feel Musk deserves it?
He’s so gross on so many levels.
I thank the gossip gods that I never get photographed unknowingly in a bathing suit.
Body shaming anyone seems like a bad move but we can certainly character shame. Elon is a terrible human and I cannot figure out what would motivate her to have an affair with him? She had secured the bag with Segey… Elon? Really???????
I would like to also co-sign @Kaiser, I would risk it all for Chris Pine. 🙂
Yes, Musk is a terrible person but he clearly has the ability to charm people when he wants to.
Meh. Strongly anti body shaming, but sometimes it’s pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
Multiple studies have shown people are generally happiest in relationships where the partners are roughly equal in attractiveness. Pointing out that too many men demand bodily perfection from their partners that they make no effort to match helps lessen the pressure to be perfect for many women.
That last line….
And he certainly has had sex, probably very frequently, because women are having his babies CONSTANTLY. My god. Incomprehensible.
They all seem to have his kids through IVF though, which is odd.
Actually it does make sense, I wouldn’t want to touch his Casper-the-unfriendly-Victorian-ghost ass.
My husband is in the tech industry so I read this to him — he already knew this, but has an interesting theory. There have been more than usual unflattering EM stories leaked lately. Someone who was sitting on a lot of info about him seems to be pushing them out to the press…
Who was EM very close with? Jack Dorsey. And who just backed out of their very public bid to buy Twitter? Hm…
😁
I thought something similar- lots of negative stories about Musk lately. More than usual. Someone’s got it in for him. Jack Dorsey? Maybe.
Or just maybe someone else on the right. It’s my theory that powerful folks on the right egged Musk to buy Twitter to grab firm hold of it as a right wing disinformation tool. Those folks are not pleased Musk backed out.
That all being said, I believe this story.
Interesting theory, although I somehow don’t think Jack Dorsey is the gossiping type (I’m probably wrong), but also, Elon Musk doesn’t need anyone to fan the flames of the negative press at all. He does that on his own with his shenanigans just as well. I don’t think anyone needs to help him.
That being said, I do think that if anyone is spreading these stories, it’s probably not Jack Dorsey. It’s likely Parag Agrawal, the current Twitter CEO, who Musk threatened to fire once he bought the company. It takes a certain level of finesse to disseminate gossip, which I don’t think Jack Dorsey is actually that capable of, somehow.
Are there more stories or are regular folk outside of the tech bubble more interested so they’re being picked up more widely?
My husband is in finance, and when I mentioned this story to him yesterday he said he’d heard this a long time ago. So I guess not much of a secret.
Is this one of the biblical warnings along with rising temperatures, wild fires, pandemics, wars, smart beautiful women having affairs with Elon Musk?
Jack is most probably very happy Elon backed out; his vision for Twitter differs from Elon’s.
Musk is just a walking disaster and a hot mess. No one forced him to smoke pot or whatever it was and breach SEC rules on some radio show. No one really cares he had so many babies with this or that person as long as it wasn’t sexual harrassment. That massage-air-hostess story was from the aggrieved party’s “friend”.
This WSJ leak is about the divorce settlement. Public hits like this could get her to back down and settle with less money. Hence it’s likely from Brin.
If she was on the outs with Sergey, maybe she thought she could snag another billionaire, his personality, politics, and overall repulsive everything be damned. And maybe Elon thought he could slip a kid in there and have it be raised by Sergey without his knowledge, since Elon would have no intention of paying child support. It’s just Elon doing his duty of populating the earth with frog people.
You mean, Mars? 🙂
What is wrong with these people? Why are these people having sex with that over grown toad? He’s awful, grotesque and miserable creature.
Thanks for not having Musk’s photo in the header for this story. He’s nauseating to look at.
Agreed! Those photos in his swimsuit could single handedly eliminate sex in heterosexual women. Place a picture of Dough Boy next to their bed and all sexual desires are gone in a second….poof
WHY??? If this is true, WHY? It cannot be the money, look who she is married to! A man with tons of money who’s definitely more attractive than whatever I’m seeing on that yacht. Elon’s not relationship material and he certainly is no Alex Skarsgard (that is who you risk it all for).
Sometimes I think too much money fries people’s brains. Or this really is bs because I don’t see how any woman could be so stupid.
Insecure people are attracted to confidence and snobbery–they perceive the egoist person giving them attention as somehow validating their own imporatnce and worth. This woman isn’t necessarily looking for money but maybe professional validation.
I am a professor, and time and again, my often insecure college-aged students fall in love with my colleague (male professor) who has got to be the most stuck up man I know. Not pretentious as in “I go to the country club and am VIP everywhere” but acts and assumes that he is the smartest man in the room (he is not). And I really think it’s because these young, insecure students are looking for validation, and attention from him gives them that validation they are looking for.
Yeah, that makes sense. I work with extremely successful, lawyers and the longer you work for these people, the better you understand that they are just good at a job that pays well. Doesn’t make them smarter or better than most. Certainly doesn’t help build character. I find it highly unattractive when they try to outsmart each other in calls or talk condescendingly about other people in emails. My boss thankfully doesn’t. The nice ones usually leave this world of law firms quickly.
It’s not attractive. It’s hot air.
Came here to second risking it all for Alexander Skarsgard. Or Chris Evans.
Not that either would choose me, Evans, Skarsgard and Pine rank so much higher on the pure interesting level to just hang out with than Musk.
Yuck.
What is wrong with these women? Gotta be the $$$$$$.
Stuff like this is probably why people say love is blind and all that. If looks/personality/money were any salient factor in entering into relationships, relationships wouldn’t be as weird as they can sometimes be. I know of two people right now who are in an extra-marital affair. The man doesn’t have the money, or the looks, or even the personality. Neither does the woman. And yet, they’re having an affair. I wish I could honestly understand it, but I really really can’t.
Elon is next level gross. Even if he literally slept on a bed made of money I wouldn’t get in there too. Besides, she’s already married to one of the world’s richest people, why risk it for that eel?
Yikes. Those yacht pictures need to come with a warning. My eyes! My eyes! Also, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody whiter. He’s practically luminous.
Maybe she did it to hurt her husband. Possible divorce or more likely separation was already happening?
I think Elon is cringe but what a way to punish your husband by sleeping with his friend while saying bye bye. .
NO. KIDDING.
I feel assaulted by this unwanted sight.
I don’t get it, he doesn’t seem like he has a good personality, capable of good conversation or is remotely funny, which is something I like even if the person isn’t “conventionally attractive”. And based on those yacht photos, he looks like a corpse that was pulled out of a river after a couple days and then photographed. I can feel the cold clammy skin from here.
@ Green Bunny, he actually does look like a body having been pulled from the water now that you pointed that out.
I couldn’t, not for all of his wealth!
Eewww.
The reason no one wants anything to do with Elon Musk, much less have sex with him, is because he’s repulsive as a person, but more importantly, it’s bad freaking news for anyone to be associated with him or his brand, period. People have stopped seeing him as a maverick of any type, and started seeing him for what he is. I know more than one person who was a big fan of Grimes, but has since refused to listen to anything she does or buy any of her stuff bc of her association with Musk. Nobody wants to risk it.
At any rate, how many tech CEOs have gotten divorced from their wives in the last few years? Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin…who else? I think people have just realized that they don’t need to deal with these people any more. I hope people have realized that the money just isn’t worth it, although I doubt that somehow. Either way, the one person I genuinely don’t hear much from is Sergey Brin. I think that’s probably a good thing.
This isn’t Brin’s first divorce. Brin’s affair with a co-worker broke up his first marriage to Anne Wojcicki, mother of their twins and the founder of DNA company 23 and Me.
So I am casual acquaintances with Nicole and while I don’t have the tea on this, it seems really out of character
This doesn’t make sense unless her marriage was already on the rocks and she was having a fling on her way out. I’m guessing this is not true, which makes it way more interesting coming from the WSJ and not some random tabloid. Somebody is up to something and clearly there’s money involved. Nicole and her reputation are just collateral damage.
I am side-eyeying this, too, and I know nothing about her except that she is a lawyer with a bit of Wendi Murdoch flair. Her lawyers asked for one billion dollars ( he is worth 90 billion) and stated she signed a prenup under duress, because she was pregnant.
There are so many reasons for divorcing a tech billionaire who can buy anything and anybody they wish. If he got caught cheating, this is a very effective way to distract. People will always remember her as the one who tupped Elon, even if she didn’t.
He filed for divorce in January and people are saying this rumor has been floating around so I don’t think it has anything to do with Elon and Twitter and everything to do with hurting Nicole’s financial settlement potential. Billionaires don’t become billionaires by being kind and generous.
None of the Chris’s move me but Oscar Isaac though…
THIS!
100% the settlement and not about people targeting Musk (he himself makes it too easy for the media to do it without insiders leaking stuff specifically to harm him). This leak came from Brin is the best guess.
Why would a mature woman sleep with him? He’s not appealing on any level. I can see how the young stars he’s wooed might be susceptible to falling for his billionaire schemes to woo them. But a mature adult whose already involved with a mega wealthy tech bro? Nah. Don’t see it.
Either someone with an axe to grind (Twitter) is leaking real info or just leaking a rumor that apparently has been known in the tech/finance world for awhile. But I dunno, Elon is pretty shameless, maybe due to this Asperger’s or maybe he really doesn’t care. But I don’t think being known potentially as a man who sleeps with a married woman and betrays his friend’s trust is that bothersome to him. His own daughter wants to get away from him, he is that loathsome.
Being on the autism spectrum has nothing to do with being shameless.
The two are not connected.
Also, Asperger’s is an outdated name, it’s not used any longer because the man, Dr Asperger, was a Nazi who experimented on people with disabilities.
Please discontinue spreading disinformation about autism. We have a tough enough time as it is.
Thank you.
Hyrule:
Those are good points. It’s a common saying that if you know one person on the spectrum, you know one person on the spectrum. While there are some identifiable behavioral traits in people with high functioning Autism, their personalities as as unique as any of us.
He is next level gross. I don’t see what anyone could find attractive or redeeming about him except for the money.
Exactly. And why would Brin’s wife be impressed by money? An affair with the sexy pool boy I could see. You’d want something you’re not getting in your marriage.
This doesn’t hurt EM so not sure it’s someone leaking this to get back at him. It definitely damages her though and any potential alimony and child support.
It won’t impact child support. Not in California. That’s sounds like something that could happen in the new Gilead-America though, punishing the child for the mother’s indiscretion.
Child support doesn’t work that way, even if people who want to punish women would love if it did. The kids are still Sergey Brin’s, which means, as their parent, he has an obligation to support them monetarily in the same way he would if he were still married. That’s what child support is for. It’s so that the child is not punished monetarily for having divorced parents, because that is not fair for the child.
Fighting in a divorce is exhausting and makes you feel crazy when you are a regular non-celebrity. Add in being smeared in public and then the other side says just agree to these terms and it’ll stop. This is not about child support. It’s about billions of dollars in assets.
TwinFalls, 100%.
Maybe she did it to hurt her husband. Possible divorce or more likely separation was already happening? I think Elon is cringe but what a way to punish your husband by sleeping with his friend while saying bye bye.
(Didn’t mean to attach this to another comment above)
From what I’ve read, they were separated but still living together. Probably for their young daughter. Maybe she decided to get the “post breakup bad decision hook up” out of the way so she can move on.
Gah those formal pictures of Musk…his transformation into Bond villain is nearly complete.
List of actors who I would risk it all to have an affair with: Paul Giamatti, Steve Buscemi, alien beauty Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and the guy who plays Mike on Better Call Saul.
Wouldn’t touch Elon Musk with a 90 foot pole.
It’s not about his body, but his corroded soul.
No to all the “Chris” actors” and a Hails No to Elon Musk. Michael B. Jordan is too pretty and he looks like he’s all of 12 years old. I would risk it all for some hotties-over-50 (I’m in my 40s and I prefer older men): Chris Meloni, Bruce Greenwood, and Shemar Moore.
I’ve read somewhere he sleeps with everyone, especially at his office. Don’t know if it’s true. He’s a douche after all lol.
Just goes to show affairs have nothing to do with the betrayed and everything to do with the mental state of the cheater. Clearly something isn’t right with her to do all this. I mean, even Beyoncé has been chumped. Let’s not blame the victim people!
And I dislike all the pale shaming – despite how I dislike Musk. Not cool to make fun of skin tone.