A former OpenAI board member has explained how her unconventional personal relationship with Elon Musk evolved into having four of his children.
Shivon Zilis testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California for hours on Wednesday as part of Musk’s lawsuit trying to reverse OpenAI’s change to a for-profit company.
The focus of Zilis’s appearance was her direct involvement in early talks with Musk around the company becoming a for-profit, but also how she worked for and became involved with Musk as she advised OpenAI.
“I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted,” she said, explaining Musk in 2020 had offered to donate sperm.
“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,” Zilis said.
Zilis has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years and held executive positions at Musk’s car company, Tesla, and his neurotechnology firm Neuralink.
She joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016, not long after it was founded, a position through which she said on Wednesday is how she first met Musk.
Given Zilis’s role across Musk’s companies and OpenAI, eventually becoming a director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023, she is an important witness in the trial.
OpenAI lawyers have suggested that she funnelled information about OpenAI to Musk after he in 2018 left the AI company, which he co-founded and made early donations to.
Zilis said she had a “one-off” romance with Musk about a decade ago but was not romantically involved with Musk in 2020, when Musk initially made the offer to father her children.
She explained she had been struggling with certain health issues which had changed her initial plans to follow a more traditional personal path of getting married and having children with a romantic partner.
