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Shivon Zilis Testifies in Musk vs. OpenAI Trial
Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk's children and former OpenAI board member, detailed extensive 2017-2018 discussions about restructuring the organization during testimony Wednesday in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk sued OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, seeking their removal, reversal of the for-profit shift and $134 billion in damages for the nonprofit arm.
May 6, 7:23 PM·3m read8 sources
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Shivon Zilis testified Wednesday in federal court in Oakland, California, that Elon Musk wanted OpenAI to join Tesla and offered Sam Altman a board seat at the electric vehicle maker. Zilis, an executive at Neuralink who served on OpenAI’s board from 2020 to 2023 and has four children with Musk, said her primary role at OpenAI was to serve as a liaison between Musk, Altman, Brockman and Ilya Sutskever.
Zilis began working with OpenAI as an informal advisor in 2016, the same year she met Musk in that capacity.
Around 2017 and 2018, Musk, Altman, Brockman, Sutskever and Zilis discussed OpenAI’s corporate structure extensively, including multiple for-profit options. "There were lots and lots of arguments about all of the different possible structures put in place at that time," Zilis said. Musk sued OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024.
He alleges that Altman and Brockman broke a founding agreement by restructuring OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. Musk is seeking removal of Altman and Brockman from their positions, undoing of the for-profit restructuring, and $134 billion in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.
Text messages and emails shown in court revealed that in 2017, Musk was working to poach top talent from OpenAI while still on its board.
Musk stopped making regular donations to OpenAI as it considered starting a for-profit arm. In August 2017, Zilis referenced a Musk "funding freeze" to Sam Teller, noting $5 million in funding for the quarter was on hold. In February 2018, Musk told Zilis he planned to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla.
Musk approached Andrej Karpathy first about joining Tesla, Zilis testified. After an OpenAI lawyer showed Zilis text messages celebrating Musk's offer to Karpathy and his acceptance, she conceded that Musk approached Karpathy first. Musk considered creating an AI lab within Tesla that would compete directly with OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind, according to Zilis emails.
