Shivon Zilis, a former board member of OpenAI and the mother of four of Elon Musk's children, testified in the ongoing Elon Musk versus OpenAI lawsuit trial. During her testimony, she was asked to clarify the nature of her relationship with the Tesla CEO and co-founder of OpenAI.
Romantic One-Off and Co-Parenting Proposal
Zilis told the court that she had a romantic one-off with Musk sometime after joining the AI company in 2016. The relationship eventually evolved into friendship and co-parenting after Musk offered to father her children. The proposal was first made in 2020, when she stated the two were not romantically involved. Zilis revealed that she had been struggling with certain health issues, which altered her initial plans to follow a more traditional path of marriage and children with a romantic partner. After Musk's proposal, she decided to have children with him in late 2020 or early 2021. "I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted," Zilis said. "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.
Confidentiality of Paternity
During her testimony, Zilis explained that when she first had twins with Musk in 2021, the plan was not for Musk to play a major day-to-day role in the children's lives. Both agreed to keep Musk's paternity "strictly confidential." Zilis told the court that this confidentiality agreement was the reason she did not initially inform Sam Altman that Musk was the father of her children. She said she told Altman about Musk's paternity the following year after learning that a Business Insider report about the children was about to be published.
Current Involvement of Elon Musk
Under oath, Zilis stated that Musk is now actively involved in the lives of their four children, and they spend a few hours together every week as a family. "We do live together when traveling, and we've been spending family time in Austin," Zilis said.
Text Messages After Musk Left OpenAI Board
Court documents revealed an exchange between Zilis and Musk after he left the OpenAI board in 2018. "Do you prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing or begin to disassociate? Trust game is about to get tricky so any guidance on how to do right by you is appreciated," Zilis asked Musk in a text shown to jurors. "Close and friendly," Musk responded, adding, "But we are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla. More than that will join over time, but we won't actively recruit them." When asked about the exchange, Zilis said: "That's just a thing I wanted to figure out how to navigate. If I was still going to be in a position of being a facilitator or a bridge."
