As the court case between billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk, and artificial intelligence (AI) company, OpenAI, concluded its week proceedings, one of the mothers of the Tesla boss’ children, Shivon Zilis last week testified that Musk offered offered OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a board seat at the Tesla.
Musk’s attorneys called several witnesses to the stand over the course of the week, including OpenAI president, Greg Brockman and Zilis, who served on the startup’s board.
Zilis, who has a close personal and professional relationship with Musk, bearing four children for the businessman, took the stand and was questioned by lawyers for Musk and OpenAI about the conversations she had about OpenAI’s corporate structure around 2017 and 2018. The attorneys also called other executives to the stand, including Altman and Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella.
Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and Brockman in 2024, alleging that they reneged on their promises to keep the artificial intelligence company a nonprofit and to follow its charitable mission. He cofounded the startup alongside Altman and Brockman in 2015.
OpenAI established a for-profit subsidiary after Musk left the company in 2018, and that business unit is the central focus of his lawsuit. During her testimony, Zilis said her primary role at OpenAI was to serve as a liaison between Musk, Altman, Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, another cofounder at the company.
She testified that the four executives discussed OpenAI’s corporate structure “ad nauseam,” including several different for-profit options. She said at one point during the negotiations, Musk wanted OpenAI to join Tesla and he offered Altman a board seat at the company.
“There were lots and lots of arguments about all of the different possible structures put in place at that time,” Zilis said. Text messages and e-mails between Zilis and Musk produced as evidence showed that Musk, while still on the board of OpenAI, was working to poach top talent from the company’s ranks, which contradicted his earlier claims.
He also stopped making regulator donations as OpenAI considered starting a for-profit arm. In August 2017 communications between Zilis and another Musk employee, Sam Teller, Zilis referenced a “funding freeze,” though he hadn’t informed his co-founders of the decision.
Zilis wrote that “OpenAI is likely to realize this week” that $5 million in funding for the quarter was on hold, and will “likely to have a big psychological impact on them if they find out.” In February 2018, as it became clear that OpenAI would not join Tesla, Zilis messaged Musk to ask if he wanted her to remain close with the team there or take some distance.
“Close and friendly but we are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla,” he replied. “More than that will join over time but we won’t actively recruit them.” Musk, who testified earlier in the trial, said Andrej Karpathy, who left OpenAI to lead Tesla’s Autopilot efforts, was already going to leave the nonprofit, and that Musk wasn’t actively luring people to join Tesla.
After an OpenAI lawyer showed Zilis text messages with her celebrating Musk’s offer to Karpathy and his acceptance of it, Zilis conceded that Musk approached Karpathy first. Musk said in his testimony that he wasn’t entirely opposed to OpenAI’s for-profit arm, but that it became “the tail wagging the dog.”
He repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of trying to “steal a charity.” Zilis’ emails showed that Musk considered creating an AI lab within Tesla that would compete directly with OpenAI, and potentially Google’s But she testified that such a lab never materialised. Instead, Musk started a competing AI venture, xAI, in 2023.
He merged that business with SpaceX earlier this year. Musk said Wednesday that xAI is now known as SpacexAI.
Zilis was said to have written in a text message to a friend on February 25, 2023, that as word was getting out Musk was starting a competitor to OpenAI: “When the father of your babies starts a competitive effort and will recruit out of OpenAI there is nothing to be done.”
Zilis worked across several of Musk’s companies, including OpenAI, Tesla and brain tech startup Neuralink. She said she began working with OpenAI as an informal advisor in 2016, which was how she met Musk.
