Grimes Net Worth

What Is Grimes's Net Worth?

Grimes is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and visual artist who has a net worth of $1 million. In 2023, Elon Musk sued Grimes in Texas over the custody of their three children. Grimes countersued. They eventually settled on undisclosed terms, but Grimes has claimed on Twitter that the legal battle "bankrupted" her.

Claire Elise Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, rose to prominence in the early 2010s. Her breakthrough came with her third studio album "Visions" (2012), which featured the singles "Genesis" and "Oblivion" and established her unique blend of dream pop, electronic, R&B, and hip-hop elements.

Grimes is known for her distinctive ethereal vocals, experimental production style, and DIY approach to music creation, often producing and engineering her own tracks. Her later albums "Art Angels" (2015) and "Miss Anthropocene" (2020) further cemented her reputation as an innovative artist pushing boundaries in electronic music.

Beyond her musical talents, Grimes's visual aesthetic and artistic vision have contributed significantly to her fame. She creates her own album artwork, music videos, and merchandise designs, developing a cohesive multimedia artistic identity.

Grimes gained additional mainstream attention through her relationship with tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, with whom she has three children. Their unusual name choices for their children (X Æ A-12, later changed to X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Techno Mechanicus) generated significant media coverage.

Her outspoken views on technology, artificial intelligence, and futurism, combined with her unique artistic vision, have established her as a distinctive voice in contemporary popular culture.

Early Life and Education

Grimes was born Claire Elise Boucher on March 17, 1988, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is of French-Canadian, Ukrainian, Italian, and Indigenous Métis ancestry and was raised Roman Catholic. Boucher went to Lord Byng Secondary School and then enrolled at McGill University to study neuroscience and Russian. Ultimately, she dropped out in 2011 before completing her degree.

First Albums and Tours

Grimes released her debut studio album, "Geidi Primes," in January 2010. A concept album, it was based on Frank Herbert's seminal science-fiction novel "Dune," as well as David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation. Later, in October 2010, Grimes released her second album, "Halfaxa." Following this, she started to publicly promote her music beyond Montreal and opened for Swedish singer Lykke Li on her North American tour. Additionally, Grimes released five songs as part of the split EP "Darkbloom," a collaboration with fellow Canadian artist d'Eon.

Breakthrough with "Visions"

After signing with the record label 4AD in January 2012, Grimes had her breakthrough album with "Visions." Recorded entirely with Apple's GarageBand software over the course of three drug-fueled weeks, the album earned high acclaim from music critics and launched the hit singles "Genesis" and "Oblivion." Moreover, it won the Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year and earned Grimes a nomination for Breakthrough Artist of the Year.

Further Albums and Tours

In November 2015, Grimes released her fourth studio album, "Art Angels." Widely acclaimed, it spawned the singles "Flesh Without Blood" and "Kill V. Maim" and made it to #1 on the Billboard Top Alternative Albums chart. The following year, in the spring of 2016, Grimes embarked on a tour of Europe and Asia and continued to tour throughout the summer at festivals across North America.

Grimes released her final album on the 4AD record label, "Miss Anthropocene," in February 2020; its singles included "Violence" and "Delete Forever." In March 2021, Grimes signed with Columbia Records, and in December, she released a new single called "Player of Games."

In 2022, Grimes released several singles ahead of her anticipated sixth album, tentatively titled "Book 1." These included "Shinigami Eyes" and "I Wanna Be Software." Although the album has yet to be released in full, she has continued to release standalone tracks and tease progress on social media.

In 2023 and 2024, Grimes leaned heavily into AI-related music projects, teasing her "AI girl group" and experimenting with AI voice modeling. She also invited fans to use her AI-generated voice to create songs in exchange for a royalty split, marking one of the first artist-led ventures into AI-powered co-creation.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

Music Collaborations and Media Contributions

Grimes has collaborated with myriad other artists throughout her career and has also contributed to film and television. In 2014, she recorded the track "Go" with Blood Diamonds, and in 2015, she collaborated with Bleachers on the track "Entropy," which was used in the HBO television series "Girls." The next year, Grimes collaborated with Hana on a series of seven music videos and also released the track "Medieval Warfare" as part of the soundtrack of the DC Comics supervillain film "Suicide Squad." In 2018, she was featured on a number of tracks, including Janelle Monáe's single "Pynk," Loona yyxy's "Love4Eva," and Poppy's "Play Destroy." The same year, Grimes composed the theme music for the Netflix animated series "Hilda."

Among her other collaborations, Grimes appeared on Bring Me the Horizon's song "Nihilist Blues" and on Benee's "Sheesh." In 2020, she partnered with various artists to release a "Cyberpunk 2077"-themed DJ mix album on Apple Music. In the fall of 2021, Grimes joined Alanis Morissette, will.i.am, and Nick Lachey as a judge on the new television singing competition series "Alter Ego."

Style and Influences

Grimes is known for her wide-ranging and eclectic style of music, incorporating everything from synth-pop and R&B to electronica, nu metal, hip hop, and avant-garde pop. She often employs layering and looping techniques to create an otherworldly sound.

In terms of her musical influences, Grimes has been seen to be inspired by such artists as Aphex Twin, Blue Hawaii, Kate Bush, Enya, Queen, St. Vincent, Yoko Kanno, New Edition, Hildegard von Bingen, Al Green, and Billy Joel, among others.

Visual Art

In addition to writing and recording, Grimes is a visual artist. She has created the album art for all of her albums, using a style inspired by Japanese anime and comic artists such as Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns. Additionally, Grimes illustrates her merchandise, such as posters and T-shirts.

Business Ventures and NFTs

In early 2021, Grimes made headlines when she sold a collection of digital art as NFTs, generating approximately $6 million in under 20 minutes. The drop, titled WarNymph Collection Vol 1, included original music and animations created with her brother Mac Boucher. Despite widespread backlash against NFTs as speculative assets, the sale significantly increased her personal wealth.

She has also collaborated with tech companies and has signaled growing interest in AI, blockchain, and Web3 technologies, often positioning herself as a futurist.

Personal Life

From 2007 to 2010, Grimes was in an on-again-off-again relationship with singer and songwriter Devon Welsh, whom she had met at McGill University. Following this, she dated electronic musician Jaime Brooks for about six years.

Grimes had her most infamous romantic relationship from 2018 to 2021, when she dated billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. The two had a son in 2020 whom they named "X Æ A-12." Because the name violated the California naming law, it was changed to "X Æ A-Xii." This was Musk's seventh child and Grimes's first.

Following her split from Elon Musk in 2021, Grimes revealed in a March 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the pair had welcomed a second child via surrogate in December 2021—a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, nicknamed "Y." As of 2024, Grimes and Musk have three children together, including a third child named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed "Tau."

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