Who is Nicole Shanahan, Elon Musk’s alleged hook-up and Sergey Brin’s wife? The lawyer and fellow tech whizz is divorcing Google’s co-founder, but was accused of having an affair – which Musk denied
- The billionaire Tesla CEO and Shanahan made headlines for allegations that the two had an affair while she was married to Brin – but Musk tweeted that it’s ‘total BS’
- At 33, she has made a name for herself in Silicon Valley, selling her ClearAccessIP company and starting Bia-Echo in 2019, but she had an unfortunate #MeToo moment, too
The news broke after The Wall Street Journal reported that his friendship with Brin had ended over the alleged affair.
Musk has denied the allegations and wrote a reply on Twitter saying it was “total BS”, adding that he’s still very much friends with the Google co-founder and was even at a party with him the night before. He said he’s only seen Shanahan twice in three years and both times “with many people around. Nothing romantic”.
The Wall Street Journal, however, reported that Musk had an affair with Shanahan late last year that led to her divorce with Brin earlier this year – which is still ongoing – also supposedly ending Brin and Musk’s long friendship.
So, what do we know about the mysterious Nicole Shanahan, the 33-year-old at the centre of the world’s richest man and his fellow multibillionaire’s would-be rift?
She is a lawyer and a tech guru
Although she has links to billionaires, Shanahan is a woman of her own accord. She is a lawyer and founded ClearAccessIP in 2013 – a firm based in Palo Alto that helps patent owners manage and monetise their intellectual property rights, reported The Straits Times. She sold the company in 2020 and it’s since been acquired by rival IPwe for an undisclosed amount.