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“Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!” he posted around Monday lunchtime,AEST. “I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years,both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.”

“I work crazy hours,so there just isn’t much time for shenanigans,” he said in a separate post.

The size of Brin’s personal investments in Musk’s companies isn’t known,and it’s unclear whether there have been any sales,the newspaper said.

According to theJournal,Brin gave Musk $US500,000 in funding to help boost Tesla’s production as it struggled during the GFC in 2008,while in 2015,Musk presented Brin with one of Tesla’s first all-electric sport-utility vehicles.

Musk isthe world’s richest person with a $US242 billion ($350 billion) fortune,according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Brin is the eighth-wealthiest,with a net worth of $US94.6 billion.

Google was formed after Brin met Larry Page as Stanford University graduate students in 1995. The pair started the company soon after. What started as a way to catalogue the growing internet has now become one of the most powerful companies in the world.

Musk’s affair with Shanahan took place in December at the Art Basel festival in Miami,and Musk asked Brin for forgiveness at a party earlier this year,according to the Journal. It reported Brin and his wife were separated but living together at the time of the alleged transgression.

Brin and Shanahan are currently negotiating a settlement,with Shanahan seeking more than $US1 billion,theJournal said,even though there’s a prenuptial agreement. The couple,who met in 2015 at a yoga retreat and married three years later,have one child together.

Shanahan is an attorney and the founder of legal tech company ClearAccessIP. She is also the founder and president of the Bia-Echo Foundation,a private family foundation that has pledged $US100 million to a range of social justice programs. The foundation is focused on female fertility,criminal justice reform and climate change.

The affair is the latest in a string of revelations about Musk’s personal life. Reports earlier this year said he became the father to twins born to Shivon Zilis,a senior executive at his artificial intelligence startup Neuralink.

Another of his companies,SpaceX,paid an employee $US250,000 to settle a claim she was sexually harassed by Musk in 2016,according toInsider. Musk said the accusations were “utterly untrue” and designed to interfere with his $US44 billion acquisition of Twitter,an agreement which he’s now trying to exit while Twitter wants the deal legally enforced.The stoush,which also led to aslanging match between Musk and former president Donald Trump,is headed to a Delaware court in October.

Bloomberg,wires

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