Google co-founder Sergey Brin had a friendly relationship with Elon Musk that had spilled over into business.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin divorced his wife, Nicole Shbahan , earlier this year after discovering she had had a brief affair late last fall with tycoon Elon Musk , The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, also indicated that the love affair between Musk and Shanahan ended the long-standing friendship that the Tesla leader had with the Google co-founder .
a broken friendship
The newspaper recalls that Musk, considered the richest person on the planet and Brin, the eighth, with multimillion-dollar fortunes, acknowledged that for years he regularly visited Brin at his home in Silicon Valley (California).
A friendship that extended to business, when during the economic crisis of 2008, Brin contributed about 500 thousand dollars to Tesla, when the luxury electric vehicle company was trying to increase its production.
According to sources cited by the Washington Street Journal , tensions between the two tycoons have increased in recent months, to the point that Brin has ordered his financial advisers to sell his personal investments in Elon Musk ‘s companies .
Divorce court papers, filed last January, cite “irreconcilable differences” between the couple as the reason for the split.
Always according to the newspaper, Brin and Shanahan had been separated for a year, but living together when the alleged “affair” took place, which occurred in early December.