Who is Nicole Shanahan? Google co-founder Brin's wife rumoured to be dating Elon Musk

Nicole Shanahan, a businesswoman and philanthropist from Silicon Valley, reportedly became the focal point of a dispute between Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Tesla CEO Elon Musk -- two of the world's richest personalities. Despite being married for more than three years, Shanahan and Brin announced in June that they would be separating owing to "irreconcilable differences." According to a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the couple decided to separate as Shanahan allegedly had an extramarital affair with Musk. However, the Tesla chief has categorically denied the allegations. 

Who is Nicole Shanahan?

California-based Shanahan, currently an attorney and a research fellow at CodeX, was the founder of ClearAccessIP. It is a Palo Alto-based company that aids patent owners in the management and monetisation of their IP rights. However, it was bought by the rival IPwe in 2020. She graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Washington, where she majored in economics, Asian studies, and Mandarin Chinese. According to her LinkedIn profile, Shanahan also attended the National University of Singapore for a short time as an exchange student while obtaining her law degree at Santa Clara University.

The estranged wife of the Google co-founder is also the founder and head of the charitable foundation Bia-Echo, which advocates for changes in the criminal justice system. The firm also promotes a sustainable future and supports research on reproductive lifespan and fertility among women in their mid-30s. 

“Like many women who are not quite ready to start a family in their early 30s, I decided, or so I thought at the time, to take matters into my own hands and freeze embryos. However, after three failed attempts at embryo-making and three dozen visits to in vitro fertilization clinics around the Bay Area, I learned that I was not nearly as unshakable as I thought I was,” she stated, as per the New York Post. 

Shanahan tied the knot with Brin in 2018

It is pertinent to mention here that Shanahan had tied the knot with Brin in 2018 and later gave birth to a baby girl in the same year. Before her relationship with the Google co-founder, Shanahan was married to a finance executive. According to the WSJ report, her alleged affair with Musk started in December 2021, when they met at the annual Art Basel event which is an exhibition organised by international galleries and panel discussions attended by wealthy collectors. While Brin filed for divorce last year, Shanahan is now reportedly demanding over $1 billion from the Google co-founder who has a net worth of $90 billion. 

(Image: AP/@NicoleShanahan /Twitter)