Shivon Zilis Testifies in OpenAI Trial
Shivon Zilis, an executive at Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink and mother of four of Musk’s children, testified on Wednesday as a key witness in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk alleges that while Zilis worked with OpenAI between 2016 and 2023, she was also involved in a confidential relationship with him and acted as an informant.
Musk’s lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman, co-founders alongside Musk, breached a founding agreement by restructuring OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit entity. Musk accuses Altman and Brockman of unjust enrichment and seeks their removal from the company, the reversal of the for-profit restructuring, and $134 billion in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.
OpenAI denies all allegations and has argued throughout the trial, now in its second week, that Musk was aware and supportive of the shift to a for-profit model. The company’s attorneys contend Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after a failed attempt to gain control and is motivated by retaliation over OpenAI’s success.
Zilis has emerged as a significant figure in the case due to her role as a bridge between Musk and OpenAI’s board, on which she served from 2020 to 2023. OpenAI’s legal team questioned the nature of her relationship with Musk, presenting communications suggesting she acted as an inside source for him after his departure. Zilis met Musk through her work at Tesla and Neuralink.
“Do you prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing or begin to disassociate? Trust game is about to get tricky so any guidance on how to do right by you is appreciated,”
Zilis texted Musk in 2018, according to court documents.
“Close and friendly, but we are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla. More than that will join over time, but we won’t actively recruit them,”
Musk replied.
Despite this, Zilis maintained good relations with OpenAI leadership. A 2023 text from Altman to Zilis showed he sought her advice on influencing Musk, asking:
“BTW, good idea for me to tweet something nice about Elon?”
Zilis, 40, became project director at Tesla in 2017 and was the youngest member of OpenAI’s board when she joined. She currently serves as an executive at Neuralink.
During her testimony, Zilis described early discussions at OpenAI about organizational structure, including the creation of a for-profit branch and billion-dollar investments from Microsoft. She initially supported the for-profit model, believing it would help fulfill OpenAI’s mission.
Regarding Musk’s departure from OpenAI’s board in February 2018, Zilis testified that she acted as a facilitator during a difficult separation, helping communication between parties.
“They were kind of bad at speaking to each other,”
she said.
“My role historically had been to facilitate communication between all of the major parties to make a maximal alignment between them.”
Altman invited Zilis to join the board in 2020, and she accepted because she had spent much of her life wanting AI to benefit humanity. When asked if she funneled information to Musk while on the board, she replied:
“Funnel? Certainly not.”
Romantic Relationship with Musk
The extent of Zilis’s personal relationship with Musk became public in 2022 when it was revealed she had twins with Musk the previous year.
Testimony revealed that Zilis and Musk became romantically involved around 2016. She resides in a house in Austin where Musk sometimes stays when visiting their children. Zilis said she decided to have children with Musk around late 2020 when he offered to “be happy to make a donation.” They now share four children.
When Musk testified last week, he referred to Zilis as the mother of his children and said they live together. The couple has been seen holding hands and attending events, including dinners with former President Donald Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.
Zilis recounted her early fascination with AI, beginning at age 13 in suburban Ontario, Canada. She read Ray Kurzweil’s book Age of Spiritual Machines multiple times, which influenced her belief in AI’s transformative potential.
“I read it 10 to 15 times and it never left me from there,”
Zilis said.
“AI is going to be the most influential thing humanity creates.”
She attended Yale University and entered the tech industry immediately after, starting at IBM and later becoming an adviser at OpenAI in 2016. She met Musk at OpenAI when he was speaking with Altman outside the office. By mid-2017, she was working for Musk at Tesla and Neuralink.
Zilis described her role as identifying bottlenecks and solving problems, often working 80- to 100-hour weeks, calling it “just bananas.”
Greg Brockman was also questioned about Zilis during his testimony. He described her as a friend since around 2012 or 2013 who later worked for Musk. Brockman said that after Musk left OpenAI in 2018, Zilis acted as a proxy for Musk and was heavily involved in the company’s restructuring into a for-profit entity.
When Zilis gave birth to twins in 2021, Brockman said she did not disclose the father’s identity and he learned of her relationship with Musk through media reports. At the time, she told Brockman the children were conceived via IVF and that her relationship with Musk was platonic.
Zilis testified she signed a confidentiality agreement with Musk not to disclose their children but informed OpenAI immediately when contacted by Business Insider about the story.
“First call was to my dad,”
Zilis said.
“The next call was to OpenAI.”
OpenAI’s board voted to allow her to remain on the board, but she eventually left when Musk founded his competing AI company, xAI, in 2023. During her testimony, a text exchange with a friend was presented, showing her reaction to Musk’s new venture.
“E’s effort has become well known,”
Zilis texted.
“Fuck,”
the friend replied.
“You ok.”
“When the father of your babies starts a competitive effort and will recruit out of OpenAI there’s nothing to be done,”
Zilis responded.
