Meet Nicole Shanahan, woman at centre of rift between billionaires Elon Musk and Sergey Brin

Jul 25, 2022 - 23:30

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Meet Nicole Shanahan, woman at centre of rift between billionaires Elon Musk and Sergey Brin

Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, philanthropist and estranged wife Sergey Brin, is at the centre of a rift between the Google co-founder and the world’s richest man and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

According to Insider, the 48-year-old billionaire Brin, citing "irreconcilable differences", filed a petition for dissolution of his marriage to Shanahan last month.

Shanahan and Brin, who tied the knot in a low-key wedding ceremony in November 2018, began dating in 2015 after meeting at a yoga retreat.

Before dating Brin, Shanahan was married to a financial executive, as per The New York Post.

Court filings show that the couple have been separated since December 2021. The Google co-founder is seeking joint custody of their two-year-old daughter.

Let’s take a closer look at Shanahan, the alleged affair with Elon Musk and the SpaceX founder’s reaction:

Who is Shanahan?

Shanahan is an attorney and a research fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, as per Bloomberg.

As per The New York Post, Shanahan founded ClearAccessIP, a software business that employs artificial intelligence to handle patents. She sold the company in 2020.

Shanahan has spoken about being a daughter of Chinese immigrants who grew up on public assistance while her mother worked as a maid.

Her LinkedIn profile states that Shanahan graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Washington State, where she studied economics, Asian studies and Mandarin Chinese.

She earned her law degree at Santa Clara University, doing a stint as an exchange student at the National University of Singapore.

In 2019, Shanahan started her own foundation, Bia-Echo, and pledged $100 million to reproductive longevity, access to medical technologies that help women bear children later in life, and criminal justice reform, along with other issues.

She is also a supporter of left-leaning organisations and Democratic political candidates, as per the report.

"I want to get the word out that and assure everyone that I am committed as ever to dedicating my life's work to social justice, climate solutions and a thoughtful, caring democracy," Shanahan said in an interview with news website Puck this month. "And I actually think that as I move forward out of this separation, I feel very optimistic in how I might grow in this role."

Alleged affair with Musk

At the time of the alleged liaison in early December with Musk, Brin and his wife were separated but still living together, a person close to Shanahan told the Wall Street Journal.

Brin filed for divorce weeks after learning of the affair, people familiar with the matter told the newspaper.

The newspaper, speaking to people with knowledge of the incident, reported that at a party earlier this Musk dropped to one knee in front of Brin and begged for forgiveness.

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Musk, responding to the reports of the alleged affair and falling out with Brin, tweeted: “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!”

"I work crazy hours, so there just isn't much time for shenanigans," the Tesla boss further tweeted.

"None of the key people involved in these alleged wrongdoings were even interviewed!"

He added that he’d only seen Shanahan twice in three years with other people around and that it wasn’t romantic.

Shanahan, speaking of the divorce filing, earlier told news website Puck: “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.”

The two billionaires have been friends for many years, with Brin providing about $500,000 of funding for Tesla in 2008 when the company was struggling financially, the newspaper earlier reported.

Musk, the world’s richest man, is currently embroiled in a battle with social media giant Twitter and has come under increasing scrutiny in his personal life.

Musk had twins with one of his top executives Shivon Zilis in November 2021, bringing his number of children to nine.