Elon Musk’s appearance on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast turned into one of those rare conversations where he genuinely let his guard down. He spoke openly about India, Starlink, AI, work, immigration, and even the Indian roots of his partner, Shivon Zilis. The Tesla billionaire, who rarely talks about his personal life, also revealed that he named one of his sons ‘Sekhar’ and shared the story behind it.
Elon Musk reveals his son’s middle name is ‘Sekhar’
During the conversation, Musk told Kamath that one of his sons has the middle name ‘Sekhar.’ He revealed choosing this name in honour of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Indian-American astrophysicist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize for his work on stellar evolution.
Musk said it was a way of recognising Chandrasekhar’s contribution to science and Indian talent. “I’m not sure if you know this, but my partner Shivon is half-Indian,” Musk told Kamath. “One of my sons with her, his middle name is Sekhar after Chandrasekhar.” Kamath was visibly surprised, which led Musk to share a little more about Zilis’ upbringing in Canada.
Zilis’ Indian heritage and early life
Musk said his wife, Shivon Zilis, is half-Indian and was adopted as a baby in Canada. While many details about her biological family remain unknown, Musk mentioned that her father may have been an Indian exchange student who studied at a Canadian university.
Zilis grew up in Canada and later graduated from Yale, where she studied Economics and Philosophy while also playing ice hockey as a goalkeeper.
Zilis joined Neuralink in 2017. Before that, she had worked with companies like IBM and Bloomberg. She joined Neuralink in 2017 and now leads operations and special projects, working closely on Musk’s long-term AI and brain–machine interface goals.
Musk on Indian talent and US Immigration
In the same episode, Musk spoke about how much the US has gained from Indian engineers, scientists and tech talent over the decades. But he said that the situation is changing because of increasing visa restrictions and policy uncertainty, which makes it tougher for skilled workers to move to the US.
“America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India,” he said, before adding that the country now risks losing that advantage.
Elon Musk on H-1B visa
Musk also admitted that the H-1B visa programme has been misused by some outsourcing companies. But he said shutting it down would be a terrible idea because companies like his constantly struggle to find enough skilled people. According to Musk, “there’s always a scarcity of talented people,” and companies like Tesla and SpaceX always look for the most capable people worldwide.
Musk says Starlink is ready for India
Musk said Starlink is already working in 150 countries and that the team would “love to be operating in India.” He explained that Starlink’s satellite internet is most useful in places where regular networks cannot reach.
He said that in rural areas, it’s often too expensive or too difficult to build proper cell towers or lay fibre cables. That’s where Starlink can help the most. But he also made it clear that the service cannot replace mobile networks in big, crowded cities because of the limits of physics. According to him, “it’s not physically possible” for Starlink to serve dense metros where cell towers are just a kilometre apart.