Elon Musk has reportedly employed two of his cousins to work for him at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California.

Andrew Musk and James Musk, from the billionaire’s father’s facet of the household, had been described as a software program engineering specialist and “a fixer kind”, respectively, by a supply who spoke to Insider.

Since Mr Musk, 51, took over of the social community in late October, roughly 70 per cent of its workers have been fired or compelled to resign, with many pushed away by his insistence on a “hardcore” working atmosphere or ideologically against his willpower to advertise free speech on the positioning at any price, even when which means platforming the far-right, counting on AI for content material moderation and horrifying away advertisers.

The entrepreneur behind SpaceX and Tesla has, nevertheless, introduced in a lot of trusted lieutenants from his different companies to assist with the working of Twitter, notably right-hand man Jared Birchall and lawyer Alex Spiro, who’ve reportedly been sleeping within the workplace in transformed bedrooms whereas the “Chief Twit” seeks to regular the ship.

Whereas Mr Musk’s personal backstory is as nicely documented as his goals of interplanetary journey, the hiring of his cousins shines a contemporary highlight on an attention-grabbing household tree.

Right here’s a fast introduction for the uninitiated.

Maye Musk

The tech tycoon’s mom, 74, is knowledgeable mannequin and dietitian who has appeared on the quilt of Time, Vogue, Sports activities Illustrated, New York journal, Elle Canada and Girls’s Day and in promoting campaigns for Goal and Virgin America, amongst many others.

She was born Maye Haldeman in Saskatchewan, Canada, on 19 April 1948, a twin and one in all 5 siblings, however raised in Pretoria, South Africa.

Her dad and mom – Elon’s maternal grandparents – chiropractor Dr Joshua Norman Haldeman and novice archaeologist Winnifred Josephine Fletcher, referred to as Wyn, had been self-styled adventurers and hung out attempting to find the Misplaced Metropolis of the Kalahari, giving illustrated talks about their travels.

A finalist within the Miss South Africa magnificence contest of 1969, Maye married highschool sweetheart and aspiring engineer Errol Musk a yr later, with whom she had three kids (Elon being the eldest, adopted by brother Kimbal and sister Tosca) whereas additionally finishing a grasp’s diploma in dietetics from the College of the Orange Free State in South Africa.

Their marriage collapsed in 1979 and, after a decade of bitter custody-wrangling that left her penniless, Maye returned with Tosca to the nation of her beginning – the place Elon and Kimbal had been then dwelling – and efficiently continued her modelling profession whereas additionally acquiring one other diploma in dietary science on the College of Toronto.

Clearly sharing the identical style for the limelight as her personal dad and mom and beloved son, Maye Musk has attended awards ceremonies as Elon’s date and appeared on Saturday Evening Reside alongside him – the pair unavoidably recalling Lucille and Buster Bluth from Arrested Growth.

Talking within the latest BBC documentary collection, The Elon Musk Present, she branded her boy a “genius” and urged his critics to “cease being imply to him”, observing that he “will get quite a lot of hate”, a galant defence of a person who, she revealed to The Instances, expects her to sleep in a storage when she visits his SpaceX tasks in Texas as a result of, “You’ll be able to’t have a flowery home close to a rocket web site.”

Errol Musk

Elon’s father Errol, 76, is a retired electromechanical engineer, marketing consultant, property developer and pilot, a quite roguish determine who claims to have as soon as owned a 50 per cent stake in an Zambian emerald mine close to Lake Tanganyika, a share he says he purchased for £40,000 after promoting off a aircraft.

“We had been very rich. We had a lot cash at instances we couldn’t even shut our protected,” he informed Enterprise Insider South Africa with glee, recounting how his sons would later stroll proper into Tiffany’s in New York Metropolis and promote emeralds produced from their trouser pockets.

Elon has typically characterised his father as an absent bully, susceptible to lecturing and dismissive of his teenage ardour for computing however the pair do have traits in widespread, not least a need to maintain busy.

In 1972, Errol was elected to the Pretoria Metropolis Council as a consultant of the anti-apartheid Progressive Occasion, a task he carried out whereas additionally pursuing his engineering consultancy and valuable stone ventures.

Following his separation from Maye in 1979 – the results of infidelities and, she later alleged, home abuse – Mr Musk married Heide Bezuidenhout, serving to to lift her daughter from a earlier marriage, Jana, and fathering two extra kids: Alexandra and Asha Rose.

One other of Mr Musk’s probably tall tales is that he shot lifeless three burglars with a .357 Magnum throughout a seven-man residence invasion in Johannesburg in 1998, six-year-old Alexandra clinging bare to his leg in terror as he fired, solely to be acquitted of manslaughter expenses after being discovered to have acted in self-defence.

“One bullet went by two of them,” he informed The Solar, greater than a little bit implausibly. “I took the primary man out by the pinnacle. The police discovered him with the highest of his head lacking.”

Amazingly, Mr Musk later went on to have one other two kids with Jana Bezuidenhout, his former step-daughter, in 2017 and 2019, the primary of which arrived when he was 72 and his associate simply 30.

He’s at the moment estranged from Elon, who described him to Rolling Stone in 2017 by saying: “You haven’t any thought about how dangerous [he is]. Virtually each crime you’ll be able to probably consider, he has achieved. Virtually each evil factor you possibly can probably consider, he has achieved… It’s so horrible, you’ll be able to’t imagine it.”

The “architect of tomorrow” additionally rubbished his father’s declare to have invested in his first software program enterprise – Zip2, which he based with brother Kimbal – and mentioned he felt there was little hope of their ever being reconciled.

“In my expertise, there’s nothing you are able to do,” he mentioned. “Nothing, nothing. I want. I’ve tried every little thing. I attempted threats, rewards, mental arguments, emotional arguments, every little thing to attempt to change my father for the higher, and he… No method, it simply acquired worse.”

Retaliating in The Day by day Mail after inviting the paper to admire his Bentley Continental and “elegant residence overlooking a large sweep of the rocky coast in South Africa’s Western Cape” and describe him as “a craggily handsome man with a 1,000-watt smile and a simple humour”, Errol Musk mentioned his eldest son “must develop up” and “recover from himself”.

“I’m not going to hit again,” he mentioned, earlier than hitting again. “I’m going to attend till he involves his senses. He’s having a tantrum, like a spoilt little one. He can’t have what he desires and now I’m apparently an evil monster.”

Mr Musk went on to counsel that the truth that he had raised his kids in luxurious, pushed them to highschool in a convertible Rolls-Royce Corniche and given them thoroughbred horses and motorbikes as youngsters may account for his or her self-centredness now.

His personal dad and mom – Elon’s paternal grandparents – had been South African Second World Warfare veteran Walter Henry James Musk and his British spouse Cora Amelia Robinson.

Kimbal Musk

Elon’s youthful brother, 50, is restaurateur, chef and proprietor of The Kitchen Restaurant Group, which operates a string of group eating places in Colorado, Chicago, and Indianapolis.

He’s additionally co-founder and chairman of each Massive Inexperienced, a non-profit devoted to constructing “Studying Gardens” for faculties to advertise wholesome consuming, and of Sq. Roots, an city farming enterprise in Brooklyn, New York Metropolis.

After graduating from highschool in Pretoria, he left South Africa to affix Elon in Canada and there graduated from Queen’s College in Ontario in 1995, the identical yr that the brothers co-founded Zip2, which they bought to Compaq for $307m 4 years later.

Kimbal has been married twice and has three kids.

Tosca Musk

Elon’s sister, 48, is a prolific government producer and movie director and co-founder of the streaming platform Passionflix, which The New York Instances has described as “devoted to variations of romance novels and erotic fan fiction” and “a horny Hallmark channel”.

Like her brothers, she too was educated in each South Africa after which Canada – having, in response to her mom, bought the household home and automobile with out telling anybody, aged 15 – graduating from the College of British Columbia in 1997.

Elon was an government producer on Tosca’s directorial debut, Puzzled (2001), and she or he has since labored on Merciless World (2005), the online collection Tiki Bar TV (2005), The Heavy (2009), Hollywood Dust (2017), The Matchmaker’s Playbook (2018) and the present Pushed (2018-22), none of which ring a bell.

The ex-wives and companions

Elon Musk can be recognized for his romantic relationships and has been married twice.

His first spouse was Justine Wilson, whom he met whereas learning at Queen’s College and married in 2000.

Their first little one collectively handed away from sudden toddler demise syndrome at 10 weeks in 2002, a tragedy he mentioned publicly lately throughout an assault on Alex Jones over his Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and which prompted the couple to pursue IVF remedy.

They subsequently had twins in 2004 after which triplets in 2006 however divorced in 2008.

That very same yr he met British actress Talulah Riley, whom he married at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland in 2010, just for the couple to then divorce two years later earlier than remarrying in 2013 and divorcing once more in 2016.

Since then, he has dated Hollywood actress Amber Heard and avant-garde pop star Grimes, with whom he had two extra kids, absurdly named X AE A-XII Musk and Exa Darkish Sideræl Musk respectively.

It was additionally reported in July this yr that Mr Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, a director of operations and particular tasks at his firm Neuralink, in November 2021 and that that he had had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, spouse of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a narrative he denied.