Elon Musk says he plans to ‘significantly’ expand child care benefits at his companies

Elon Musk announced this week he plans to expand child care benefits for employees at his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla.

The announcement comes on the heels of an Insider report published on Wednesday that revealed Musk had welcomed twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive who works for him as Director of Operations and Special Projects at Neuralink, a company that aims to develop brain chips that can be implanted into the human brain.

According to the Insider report, the twins were quietly born last year just weeks apart from the child Musk had with his wife Grimes. Musk now has a total of nine children.

After the news of the twins broke, Musk responded on Twitter by joking that he is helping prevent “collapsing birth rates.” Musk wrote, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.” In a separate Tweet on Friday Musk said he is planning on expanding child care benefits for his employees.

“Kids are worth it if at all possible,” Musk wrote. “I’m planning to increase childcare benefits at my companies significantly. Hopefully, other companies do same. Also, Musk Foundation plans to donate directly to families. Hopefully, details to be announced next month.”

Currently, Tesla employees receive 16 weeks of paid family leave as part of their benefits package, which trails far behind Google parent company, Alphabet, Inc., which offers its employees 24 weeks of paid family leave. 

Musk also made headlines this week when he announced on Friday he is walking away from his offer to buy out Twitter.