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Who is Nicole Shanahan, woman at centre of rift between Elon Musk and Sergey Brin?
- A report said that the Tesla boss and the Google co-founder’s wife had an affair, a charge that Musk has since denied
- A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Shanahan has also pledged US$100 million to women’s reproductive rights and criminal justice reform
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Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan emerged this weekend at the centre of a rift between two of the world’s richest men, Sergey Brin and Elon Musk.
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Shanahan and Google co-founder Brin have been married for over three years but announced in June they plan to divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences.”
The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that Tesla CEO Musk and Shanahan had an extramarital affair, an allegation that Musk has since denied. A spokeswoman for Shanahan didn’t respond to requests for comment, according to the WSJ.
Shanahan and Brin signed a prenuptial agreement and are currently negotiating the terms of their divorce, in which she seeks more than US$1 billion, according to the report. That could put the settlement of her divorce in the same league as those of billionaire philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates.
Now a lawyer and a research fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Centre for Legal Informatics, Shanahan founded ClearAccessIP, a Palo Alto-based firm that helps patent owners manage and monetise their intellectual property rights. It was acquired by rival IPwe in 2020.
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