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Shivon Zilis Testifies She Maintained Independence as OpenAI Director During Relationship With Elon Musk
Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk's children and former OpenAI board member, took the stand in federal court in Oakland on May 6, 2026. She detailed her decade-long relationship with Musk, her board service from 2020 to 2023 and denied funneling information. The testimony offered new details on OpenAI's early governance tensions dating to 2017.
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Shivon Zilis took the witness stand on Wednesday, May 6, 2026, in federal court in Oakland, California, on the sixth day of Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Musk alleges that Altman and Brockman are enriching themselves from what was supposed to remain a charitable endeavor.
Zilis, who worked at OpenAI beginning in 2016, served on its board of directors for several years before leaving in 2023.
Zilis has worked at Neuralink and at Tesla. She is the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children. Their relationship began with a one-off romantic encounter at a corporate off-site event approximately a decade ago.
In 2020, Elon Musk offered to donate sperm to Zilis as a platonic sperm donor after noticing she wanted to have children. Zilis and Musk now have a romantic partnership. She testified that her relationship with Musk did not affect her decisions as an OpenAI board member.
“I had an allegiance to the best outcome, AI for humanity,” Zilis testified. She testified she was not funneling information to Elon Musk while on the OpenAI board. ” In 2017 the OpenAI co-founders were going through a “weird half-breakup,” Zilis testified.
She joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016 and first met Musk through her advisor position at OpenAI. Zilis became a director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023 and gave birth to twins fathered by Musk in 2021 while serving on the board. Zilis and Musk agreed to keep his paternity of the first two children strictly confidential because of security concerns.
She informed the OpenAI board about her relationship with Musk only after Business Insider told her it planned to publish a story. Her first call after learning of the impending Business Insider story was to her dad; the next was to Sam Altman. She told Altman that Musk was the father of the twins in 2022.
