Elon Musk’s ex says she turned down a $40M NDA — then her child support was cut to about $5M total. Was it all worth it?

Ashley St. Clair says she was offered roughly $40 million to stay quiet about Elon Musk for good. She turned it down so she could tell her story.

In Musk , Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary, the 28-year-old author and former conservative influencer describes what saying no cost her. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 8 and expanded to theaters nationwide on Oct. 16, a day after Musk was in Texas showing off Tesla's new flying Roadster . St. Clair says the monthly child support she gets for their son, Romulus, now 2, fell to $20,000 — a fifth of the $100,000 a month she says Musk's team offered if she signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA).

If the $20,000 rate held until Romulus turns 21, it would total about $5 million. By her account, the offer was worth about $40 million.

Musk, 55, denies ever making the offer. "She was never offered that and has a history of making false claims," he wrote on X on Sept. 9, replying to a TMZ post about her Venice comments.

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St. Clair first laid out the offer in a June interview with Don Lemon , which Moneywise covered at the time . She said it began when Musk messaged Jared Birchall, who runs Musk's family office, to "wire Ashley 15 million for a home and reserve capital." Birchall then told her there would need to be "some sort of NDA," she said.

In the film, she says the paperwork "was labeled as a child support agreement" and offered "a lump sum of $15 million and then $100,000 a month for 20 years." The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the offer in April 2025, said the monthly payments would run until Romulus turned 21. In exchange, St. Clair told Lemon she'd be barred from disparaging or speaking about Musk, his employees, or his affiliates "into eternity."

According to the Journal, the deal had no trust fund or life insurance for their son if Musk died before the boy turned 21, and St. Clair would have had to pay back the $15 million if she broke it.

St. Clair has said she couldn't sign it in good conscience and didn't want her son to grow up feeling like a secret.