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Musk Sues OpenAI Over 2017 For-Profit Restructuring
A former OpenAI board member who is the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children testified Wednesday in federal court in Oakland, California. She described her personal relationship with Musk, her role in early discussions about shifting OpenAI from nonprofit to for-profit status, and how she kept Musk’s paternity of her children confidential from company leadership until 2022.
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Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member, testified for several hours Wednesday in federal court in Oakland, California, in Elon Musk’s lawsuit over the company’s restructuring. Court exhibits showed that by 2017 OpenAI leadership viewed a shift away from a pure nonprofit model as necessary to raise the billions of dollars required for growth.
Zilis participated in written exchanges about possible structures, including a B Corp that would remain mission-oriented while allowing investment.
Musk pushed for greater control, including additional board seats, and at one point suggested OpenAI could become a B Corp subsidiary of his electric car company. Zilis wrote in one exchange that such a move “would solve the funding issue immediately,” according to court records.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman and another co-founder ultimately could not agree on terms with Musk because they were adamant he not gain control of the company’s work.
Musk’s lawsuit alleges that Altman and Brockman broke a founding agreement when they restructured OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise. He is seeking to reverse that change, have both executives removed from their positions, and have $134 billion in damages redirected to the nonprofit arm.
Zilis joined OpenAI as an adviser in 2016 shortly after its founding and first met Musk through that role. She later served on the board from 2020 until March 2023. During testimony she said Musk offered in 2020 to donate sperm after noticing she had not had children.
She told the court, “I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted.
She said the initial arrangement was for Musk to have a limited role in the children’s lives and for his paternity to remain strictly confidential. The pair later had two more children together. Zilis did not disclose Musk’s paternity of the twins born in 2021 to Altman when she learned she was pregnant; she informed him the following year only after learning a news report on the matter was imminent.
