Former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis has spoken publicly about how her relationship with Elon Musk led to them having four children together.
Zilis appeared in federal court in Oakland, California, on Wednesday during Musk’s legal battle against OpenAI.
Musk is challenging the company’s decision to move toward a for-profit business model.
During her testimony, lawyers questioned Zilis about her involvement in OpenAI’s early business discussions and her professional connection with Musk.
While speaking in court, Zilis explained why she decided to have children with him.
“I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted,” she said, referring to Musk’s offer in 2020 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,” she added.
Zilis has spent more than 15 years working in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist.
Over the years, she also took leadership roles at Tesla and Neuralink. In 2016, she joined OpenAI as an adviser soon after the company launched. She said that was when she first met Musk.
Her links to both OpenAI and Musk’s businesses made her an important witness in the ongoing court case. She later joined OpenAI’s board and served from 2020 until 2023.
OpenAI’s lawyers argued in court that Zilis may have passed company information to Musk after he left OpenAI in 2018. Musk helped create the company and supported it financially in its early days before stepping away.
Zilis told the court that she and Musk briefly dated around a decade ago. However, she said they were no longer romantically involved when he offered to help her have children.
She explained that health problems had affected her original hopes of getting married and starting a family traditionally.
Because of those changes, she accepted Musk’s offer. At first, she did not expect him to take an active parenting role with their first two children.
The two also agreed to keep the details about the children’s father private.
According to Zilis, that situation has changed over time. She said Musk now spends several hours each week with their four children and remains actively involved in their lives.
Zilis also explained why she kept Musk’s identity secret from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman after giving birth to twins in 2021. She said a confidentiality agreement stopped her from sharing the information.
She eventually informed Altman in 2022 after learning that Business Insider planned to publish a report revealing Musk as the father.
Even after finding out, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman still wanted her to continue serving on the company’s board. Zilis said they remained on good terms until at least 2023.
Earlier this week, Brockman addressed questions about Zilis continuing to work with OpenAI after Musk’s departure.
“We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control,” he said.
Zilis stepped down from OpenAI’s board in March 2023. Around the same period, Musk launched xAI, a company that now competes directly with OpenAI and its chatbot, ChatGPT.
The court also reviewed old emails and text messages exchanged between Musk, Zilis, Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI figures.
Those messages showed that OpenAI leaders had already started discussing changes to the company’s structure in 2017.
They believed the organisation needed a profit-making model to attract large investments and continue expanding.
At the time, Brockman and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever supported turning OpenAI into a B Corp, a business structure that allows companies to pursue profits while keeping a broader mission.
Messages shown in court also revealed that Musk wanted a stronger influence over OpenAI.
He reportedly suggested increasing his control through additional board seats and even discussed bringing OpenAI under Tesla as a subsidiary.
In one exchange presented during the hearing, Zilis wrote that the idea “solves the funding issue immediately.”
However, negotiations eventually broke down.
Emails shown in court suggested that Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever strongly opposed giving Musk control over OpenAI’s direction and decision-making.
This was reported by the BBC and monitored by The Ghana Report.
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Kofi Agyeman
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