This past weekend, Elon Musk and Sergey Brin, two of the richest men in the world, developed a disagreement that put Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan in the spotlight.
Despite being married for more than three years, Shanahan and Brin announced in June that they would be divorcing due to “irreconcilable issues.” This past weekend, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Musk and Shanahan had an illicit relationship. Since then, Musk has refuted this claim.
According to the story, Shanahan and Brin have a prenuptial agreement and are currently discussing the terms of their divorce, in which she is asking for more than $1 billion. That might put her divorce settlement on par with those of the wealthy billionaires MacKenzie Scott and Melinda Gates.
![Nicole Shanahan](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/616e035b7530f9d88fd42ee2/622035d9decfc60b73f8ce63_NicoleShanahanAtHome.jpg)
Shanahan established ClearAccessIP, a Palo Alto-based company that aids patent owners in managing and monetizing their intellectual property rights. Shanahan is currently an attorney and a research fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. Competitor IPwe purchased it in 2020.
She graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Washington State, where she majored in economics, Asian studies, and Mandarin Chinese, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She attended the National University of Singapore for a short time while an exchange student obtaining her law degree at Santa Clara University.
Is Nicole Shanahan Asian?
Nichole Shanahan is an Asian and she is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant. According to Nicole, her mother worked as a maid and she depended on her and on government support too.