She is alleged to have broken up Elon Musk’s friendship with Sergey Brin over years. After growing up in poverty, she went on to become a lawyer before dating one of the richest men in the world.
Nicole Shanahan, 37, is said to have had a brief affair with Musk at Art Basel, a multi-day art event in Miami, in December of last year, which prompted her Google co-founder husband to file for divorce in January.
Brin has a net worth estimated at $95 billion. But The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk’s relationship with Nicole caused their marital dissolution.
The couple were visiting Miami together for an art festival. This was at the time Shanahan, Brin and their 4 year-old daughter were experiencing marital issues due to stress from COVID-19.
Musk had recently separated from his girlfriend Grimes.
Brin, who filed for divorce just one month later, listed December 15th as the date of their separation. He reportedly also directed his staff to withdraw all of Musk’s investments.
According to sources, Shanahan wants $1,000,000 in divorce settlement. That’s more than the prenup she signed, but still a lot less than what she received as a child on food stamps.
For her work fighting for reform in criminal justice, improving the environment, and researching the longevity of women’s sperm has been hailed as a changemaker.

Nicole Shanahan is 37 years old and was brought up on food stamps, her parents being unemployed. She later became an entrepreneur. In September she was pictured at the Museum of Motion Pictures Opening Gala Los Angeles


Shanahan is said to have had an affair with Tesla CEO Elon Musk when they were both at Art Basel, a multi-day art event in Miami, in December of last year. Sergey Brin, her Google cofounder, was reportedly the one to end their relationship.
Shanahan spoke out about the challenges she experienced as a child, and how these helped her become an entrepreneur.
She said that she had to learn how the world worked as a kid. This was after her father was diagnosed with schizophrenia and her mother was an immigrant from China trying to find her way in America.
Shanahan said that his dad, who was bipolar schizophrenia in my thirties, had just been born to me when he was nine years old. Shanahan also mentioned that Shanahan’s mother was Chinese and she only lived there for two more years.
She said that she grew up with unemployed parents.
According to her, it was because she had to learn how to succeed on her own. She bussed tables when she was 12 years old and then used the Internet to find jobs and colleges.
“I have learned to be creative and compete by making things that aren’t meant for me perform well at levels far beyond what they can do.”
According to her LinkedIn profile she attended the University of Puget Sound from 2003. There she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics.
Then, she studied global intellectual properties trade and Chinese legal at the National University of Singapore before beginning law at Santa Clara University.

Shanahan said that her struggle to grow up poor led her into being resourceful

In 2020, she founded Bia-Echo, an investment firm that pours money into organizations supporting reproductive longevity and equality; criminal justice reform; and preserving a healthy and livable planet
Modern Luxury reports that she started her 20’s at RPX Corporation, working as a patent specialist. She quit in just 10 months, however, after being sexually assaulted.
Shanahan stated that she suffered from severe depression and quit the law. She then moved in with her aunt.
She was eventually able get back to work after some time and founded ClearAccessIP which is an AI-enabled, patent management company. ClearAccessIP sold its shares last year.
Bia-Echo was her first investment firm. According to their website, it invests money in organisations that promote reproductive longevity, equality and criminal justice reform.
Shanahan had earlier supported these goals through her husband’s organization, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, but started working on these goals herself in 2020, when she founded the foundation.
Since then, it has partnered up with the Buck Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality and National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in order to create the Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality. Here scientists study women’s fertility.
The company is working to improve soil health and reduce carbon emissions in agriculture.
Shanahan was also an academic fellow at Code X (the Stanford Center of Legal Informatics), where she initiated the Smart Prosecution Project, a multidisciplinary project that applied data science to prosecutorial processes with collaborations between community groups and district attorneys.
She says her goal is to leave a legacy of ideas.
She said, “I want my legacy be one of ideas.” “I want my legacy to focus on improving the human experience and sustaining it in an abundant manner.”
I want it be filled with strength, love, and compassion. It should be about working hard and learning from mistakes.

Shanahan, who was the eighth wealthiest man on the planet, had first met Brin at a Yoga retreat in 2015. The couple were then married privately in November 2018.
Shanahan married a finance executive in her private life before marrying Brin, the eighth-richest man in the globe, at a 2015 yoga retreat.
According to Economic Times, they were married in a quiet ceremony on November 7, 2018.
After years of struggling with fertility, Shanahan and Shanahan welcomed their daughter to the world.
She told Page Six that she felt “like many women in her 30s who aren’t ready to start families yet,” in 2019.
“But, however, after three unsuccessful attempts at embryo-making, and many visits to clinics in the Bay Area for in vitro fertilization, I realized that my faith was far less than I had thought.”
However, Brin divorced his wife of 4 years in January after learning about Musk’s affair with her.
To protect his daughter, he cited “irreconcilable disagreements” in the divorce papers.
Google’s founder, Googler, is asking for custody. This will happen as part of their divorce arrangement. They are trying to keep the details private to avoid any embarrassment or kidnapping of their daughter.

Musk and Brin had known each other for many years before the affair. Brin gave Musk $500,000 at the height the 2008 financial crisis to help fund Tesla. In the early 2000s, they were pictured together with Larry Page.
Sergey and Elon’s long-standing friendship was abruptly ended by Shanahan’s affair.
Sergey and the tech mogul in question were seen together many times during the 2000s. In 2008, Sergey provided $500,000 funding for Tesla in peak financial crisis.
Elon also fondly remembered crash-ing at Sergey’s houses.
Musk is reported to have run into Sergey after he filed for divorce at a party and begged him for forgiveness.
Although he publicly acknowledged his apology, sources from the Journal claim that they no longer speak regularly.
Brin has now reportedly ordered his aides to sell his multiple interests in Musk’s many businesses.
Musk hasn’t yet spoken out on the claims.