Elon Musk's Siblings: All About Brother Kimbal and Sister Tosca
Elon Musk and his two siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, have been supportive of one another's business endeavors
Elon Musk isn’t the only entrepreneur in the family.
The billionaire businessman has two siblings: brother Kimbal Musk and sister Tosca Musk. The three were raised by their parents, Errol Musk and Maye Musk, and have each built their own companies. Tosca is the co-founder of a streaming service, while Kimbal owns a group of restaurants.
Elon also has four younger half-siblings from his father: sisters Alexandra and Asha Rose from Errol's marriage to Heide Bezuidenhout, and brother Elliot "Rushi" and another sister, who Errol shares with his former stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout.
Speaking with CNN in November 2022, Tosca revealed that although she, Elon and Kimbal occasionally ask each other for business advice, they try to keep their conversations family-related.
“I get advice from them to a certain degree when I ask for it. But no unsolicited advice,” she said. “If I ask for advice, I have no doubt that [Elon] will give it to me. And then I have to take it because he’s going to be right. So you have to really want to know what you want to ask. But most of the time when I’m with my family, we talk about family things.”
As for dealing with doubt, Tosca told The Sunday Times in July 2022 that the siblings are confident in their ideas, even when people think their risky business ventures will fail.
“That’s probably [true of] everybody in our family. If we say we’re going to do something, just believe us, we’re going to do it,” she said. “A lot of people will say things are not going to work because they aren’t used to taking risks. With us, it’s like, well, no one’s done it before. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
Here’s everything to know about Elon Musk’s siblings, Kimbal and Tosca Musk.
They grew up in South Africa
Elon, Kimbal and Tosca were raised by their parents, Errol and Maye, in Pretoria, South Africa. The three siblings grew up in the same household until their parents divorced in 1979, after which Elon moved in with his father.
“I felt sorry for my father, because my mother had all three kids. He seemed very sad and lonely by himself. So I thought, ‘I can be company,' ” Elon told Rolling Stone in 2017. “Yeah, I was sad for my father. But I didn’t really understand at the time what kind of person he was. It was not a good idea.”
In November 2019, Maye spoke to Harper’s Bazaar about the alleged abuse she suffered during her marriage to Errol and life as a single mother after the divorce. (Errol has denied being physically and emotionally abusive toward his ex-wife.)
"Everybody I knew called him 'the Pig' because he treated me so badly in public. And I was too scared to tell anyone [about his violence]," Maye said of Errol. “He was very rich, but he made sure I had nothing. Once the kids were living with me, they visited their father some weekends. He would throw out everything they arrived with, so I had to buy them all new clothes and school things. Then he'd sue me and say that I was unfit to parent."
Maye also told Harper's Bazaar that when Tosca was 15 years old, she "sold our house and car without asking me so we could move to Canada," where Elon had recently started school.
“We lived in a rent-controlled apartment and we bought our clothes off whatever discount rack there was at the discount store,” Tosca told The Sunday Times.
“Some people spew hate language towards us because they think we grew up with a silver spoon and were given everything — which is so far from the truth. When I was growing up it was just a matter of survival,” she added.
Tosca is the co-founder of a streaming service and production company
Tosca is the co-founder and CEO of Passionflix, a streaming service and production company that adapts romance novels into films.
Speaking with CNN in November 2022, Tosca said she and her co-founder Joany Kane “had to go out and find every investor” and convince them of the platform’s potential.
“Trying to raise money for a female-driven platform on romance was just not high on anybody’s priority list at the time,” she said. “But as soon as we showed there was that many people that would come on board, the investors just started flying in.”
Tosca also noted that the company’s biggest challenge is that they “can’t produce enough content to satiate the fans,” and she’s invested in telling all types of romantic stories that empower women.
“Love is amazing, it’s incredibly powerful. I love to tell stories of love, all kinds of love,” she said. “So parental love, friend love, family love and love between any kind of couple.”
Tosca received her bachelor’s degree in film from the University of British Columbia and previously produced romance films for the Lifetime and Hallmark channels.
Tosca has twins
The Passionflix founder is a mom to fraternal twins, daughter Isabeau and son Grayson, whom she welcomed in 2013 through in vitro fertilization and a sperm donor. She told The Sunday Times in 2022 that it “just didn’t make sense” to wait for the right partner to have kids.
"I didn't want to have children with somebody I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with,” she said. “And have to be attached to [that person] and have them make decisions about my children and my life ultimately. And I certainly didn't want to go through brutal divorces."
With the help of a matchmaker, Tosca chose a sperm donor. Her family fully supported her journey to becoming a mother.
“I told my eldest brother [Elon] first and he said immediately, ‘I think that’s a good idea. You’d make a great mother. I support you in that,’ ” she recalled. “My mum was like, ‘Ooh, that’s fabulous. So how do we choose a donor? Do we all just get drunk and spin a bottle?’ ”
As for how she felt about being a single mom, Tosca said: “It was the best decision I ever made. I can’t even imagine life without my children.”
Kimbal is a chef and entrepreneur
Kimbal may be a board member at Tesla and SpaceX, but his true passion lies in the food industry. He attended the French Culinary Institute in 2001, and three years later, he co-founded a restaurant called The Kitchen with chef Hugo Matheson in Boulder, Colorado, according to The New York Times.
In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Kimbal shared that he “always loved food” and would often cook for his loved ones.
“Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family,” he said. “I used to throw cooking parties in university. Everyone would come over — sometimes you’d just do a mac and cheese, but if you do that better than everyone else you can get people to come to you.”
He also shared that while he was a culinary student in New York City, he spent six weeks cooking for firefighters at Ground Zero after 9/11. The experience inspired him to start The Kitchen and its subsequent locations.
“Cooking for the firefighters, it was this just overwhelming sense of community that was created,” he said. “It’s impossible to describe how intense and awesome it was to see everyone doing that. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me — to see 9/11 and be part of helping bring people together."
Kimbal added: “Doing that every day for 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, my brain couldn’t go back to tech. I determined right there and then to open a restaurant.”
The entrepreneur previously worked in tech as the co-founder of the online city guide platform Zip2, which he and Elon sold in 1999 for $307 million. Since venturing into the food industry, Kimbal has also co-founded two other companies. Kimbal and Matheson launched Big Green in 2011, a nonprofit organization that builds outdoor “learning gardens” in schools. In 2016, Kimbal also founded Square Roots, an urban indoor farming company, though the business shut down most of its locations in July 2023, according to Business Insider.
Kimbal married Christiana Wyly in 2018
On June 30, 2018, Kimbal married environmental activist Christiana Wyly in Spain. At the reception, the groom performed a rendition of Elton John’s “Your Song” for his wife before they had their first dance to Ellie Goulding’s version of the same track, according to his Instagram.
The couple celebrated their fifth anniversary in 2023 and commemorated the milestone by returning to the same place where they exchanged vows. "For the 5th anniversary of our wedding (3/3 weddings 😆) we went back to the Greek & Roman ruins where we were married. I surprised kimbal by playing our first dance song in that same spot," Christiana captioned a video of the two dancing.
Kimbal was previously married to artist Jen Lewin.
They are very close
Tosca told The Sunday Times that she and her siblings had a close relationship as children and have maintained their bond despite living in different cities.
“I don’t know if they’ll agree with me but I think we share a lot of characteristics. We certainly enjoy each other’s company. We try to see each other as often as possible,” she said. “Kimbal’s a chef so he’ll cook dinner. Normally, we’re just hanging around the table and having a chat and laughing.”
Kimbal has credited their mom as the reason why the siblings have managed to stay so close over the years. “We’ve come a long way from a small town in Africa. ❤️ thank you Ma for always working to keep us together,” he wrote on Instagram alongside a family photo from his wedding.
Kimbal and Tosca are proud of Elon
Elon’s siblings are extremely proud of his success in the tech world. Tosca told The Sunday Times that her children have a hard time understanding “why people would say [negative] things” about Elon, but she’s always quick to praise her older brother.
"I'm incredibly proud of my older brother. He is a phenomenon,” she said. "He's exceptional in so many ways and his goals to help humanity are beyond anything that anybody can imagine. So there's no taint at all."
In May 2020, Kimbal expressed his admiration for Elon after SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts into space, which marked the company’s first crewed mission.
“Today was history in the making. Such an incredible day. I’m so proud of everyone @SpaceX, @nasa, and most of all my brother,” Kimbal wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of his family.
They developed their work ethic from their mom
The three siblings have their mom to thank for their strong work ethic. During an interview with Entrepreneur in February 2018, Tosca shared how her mother’s “passion” for her work inspired all of them.
“My mother was a very big influence on all of us and she worked all the time. She worked mostly from home. She was a model but she also had a dietetics practice at home. And so we saw her work all the time,” she said. “She was always around us and if we needed something she was always there. Then she had us work for her. Our chores were not take out the garbage, our chores were write doctor's letters [and considering] what would you do in this business case? So we had a little bit more of an impact on her work.”
In Maye's 2019 book, A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success, the model recalled how she set an example for her children and taught them to work hard.
“I brought up my children like my parents brought us up when we were young; to be independent, kind, honest, considerate and polite, to work hard and do good things. I didn’t treat them like babies or scold them,” she wrote, per an excerpt published in Forbes. “I never told them what to study. They just let me know what they were studying, or didn’t. I didn’t check their homework; that was their responsibility. It certainly hasn’t hurt their careers. I think my siblings and I benefited, and my children benefited from taking responsibility early on.”
Kimbal and Elon disagree a lot
In July 2024, during an interview with The Times, Kimball and his wife, Christiana, opened up about their relationship with Elon, describing it as "chaos."
"Kimbal challenges Elon and disagrees with him more than anyone, but in a container of, ‘I love you, you’re my brother. But I don’t agree with you…’ ” Christiana shared. “They have different world views but at the end of the day, they are both just giggling children. They have the most insane laughter attacks with each other.”
Kimball told the outlet that he and Elon "literally used to get into fistfights" as kids but always patched things up quickly.
“We might be angry as heck in the moment, and then five minutes later we want to watch a movie together,” he added.
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