- Former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis testified about her children with Elon Musk.
- Zilis accepted Musk’s offer to father her children due to personal circumstances.
- She initially kept Musk’s paternity confidential but later disclosed it.
A former OpenAI board member has detailed how her personal relationship with Elon Musk led to her having four of his children. Shivon Zilis, who has worked across several of Musk’s companies, spent hours on the witness stand in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, on Wednesday.
She was testifying as part of Musk’s lawsuit seeking to reverse OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit structure. Her testimony covered both her personal ties with Musk and her role in early internal discussions about the company’s corporate direction.
How Shivon Zilis Went From OpenAI Advisor to Key Witness in Musk’s Lawsuit
Zilis joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016, shortly after the company was founded, and that is where she first met Musk. She later became a director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023, while also holding executive positions at Musk’s companies, Tesla and Neuralink. She has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years.
On the personal side, Zilis said she had a “one-off” romance with Musk roughly a decade ago but was not romantically involved with him in 2020, when he offered to father her children. She explained she had been dealing with health issues that changed her original plans for a more traditional path to motherhood.
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“I still really wanted to be a mum, and Elon made the offer around that time, and I accepted,” she said. “He was encouraging everyone around him at that time to have kids, and he’d noticed I did not. He offered to make a donation.”
The two had initially agreed to keep Musk’s paternity “strictly confidential.” Zilis said this is why she did not disclose to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman that twins she gave birth to in 2021 were fathered by Musk. She told Altman the following year, after learning that a Business Insider report on the matter was about to be published.
What Zilis’s Testimony Revealed About OpenAI’s Corporate Structure Debates
Despite the disclosure, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman wanted Zilis to remain on the board. The three stayed friends until at least 2023, she said. When asked about her continued involvement at OpenAI after Musk’s departure, Brockman said: “We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control.”
Zilis left the board in March 2023, around the time Musk launched xAI, a company whose chatbot directly competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Her testimony also shed light on internal debates about OpenAI’s corporate structure. Written exchanges shown in court indicated that moving away from a pure non-profit was seen as necessary as early as 2017, so the company could raise billions from investors. Co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever pushed for a transition to a B Corp, a for-profit entity tied to a specific mission.
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Emails from Zilis showed Musk wanted greater control over OpenAI, including additional board seats, and even suggested the company become a subsidiary of Tesla. Zilis noted in one written exchange that such a move “solves the funding issue immediately.”
Ultimately, talks broke down because Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever were firm that Musk “not have control” of OpenAI’s work, according to an email from Zilis shown in court.
