Elon Musk’s mother claims he was a genius by the age of three in bizarre interview

Elon Musk’s mother has claimed the tech billionaire and world’s richest man was “a genius” by the time he was just three years old.

Maye Musk, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) owner’s 78-year-old mother, was speaking in an interview with The Telegraph about her 55-year-old son, who was briefly part of the second Trump administration and has allied himself with far-right movements around the world.

“He would reason with me. Three-year-olds don’t reason with you,” she explained. “I’d be saying, ‘I’m going to go and buy these things,’ and he would say, ‘Why don’t you buy this one and that, it’ll be less expensive if you do it this way’. And, hello? You’re three years old! What do you know?”

Ms Musk, a model and dietitian with Canadian, South African and US citizenship, married Errol Musk in 1970, before giving birth to Elon in 1971. She has worked with leading fashion brands, appeared on magazine covers, and featured in Beyonce’s 2013 music video for the song ‘Haunted’.

She divorced Errol Musk in 1979, before Elon, aged around 10, went to live with his father.

Ms Musk recalled: “[Errol] had two sets of encyclopaedias as well as [a home in a] bigger city, a library, a computer. I couldn’t afford a computer at the time. He does say it was miserable, but he had his computer and he had his reading and he can actually just blank everything else out.”

Her son, who has faced accusations of racism and support for white supremacy, has been criticised for his support for German far-right political party the AfD and British far-right figure Tommy Robinson. But Ms Musk remained defensive on his behalf.

“It’s horrible,” Ms Musk said of the accusations, adding that it is “really hard” for her that the majority of coverage around her son is negative - at least according to his AI chatbot, Grok. “It’s just dishonest… and then he gets death threats. That’s horrifying. You don’t want that [for] your kids.”

She added: “When you see someone you love being treated like that, even if your politics diverge, it’s terribly upsetting.”

All family gatherings - including her son Kimbal and daughter Tosca, aged 53 and 52 respectively - now take place in “remote” places because Elon “can’t go anywhere”, Ms Musk adds. The family does not have a group chat - and Musk finds staying in touch the most difficult.

“Elon is really busy at the moment – well, at every moment – so I don’t send him texts saying, ‘How are you feeling, darling?’” Ms Musk told the outlet. “Even when I visit, I sit in on his meetings. He does one every hour. I’m talking about weekends. And by 11pm, I’m tired.”

The most recent meeting was in June for Musk’s 55th birthday in a secret location, she said, adding: “It was just lovely. You can relax because nobody knows we’re there.”