Shivon Zilis: Elon Musk’s Insider Inside OpenAI

As the first week of the trial in Musk v. Altman draws to a close, one figure has quietly emerged as a central behind-the-scenes operator: Shivon Zilis , the woman who managed communications, egos, and information flow during OpenAI’s formative years.

A longtime employee of Elon Musk and the mother of four of his children, Zilis first joined OpenAI as an adviser in 2016. She later served as a director on its nonprofit board from 2020 to 2023, while also holding executive roles at Musk’s other ventures, Neuralink and Tesla.

In court, Musk offered shifting descriptions of their relationship. At one point, he called her a “chief of staff.” Later, a “close adviser.” He also acknowledged, “We live together, and she’s the mother of four of my children,” though Zilis clarified in a deposition that Musk is more of a frequent visitor and maintains his own residence. In September of last year, Zilis told OpenAI’s legal team that her romantic involvement with Musk began around 2016, after she had already become an informal adviser to OpenAI. Their first two children were born in 2021.

But OpenAI’s attorneys have built a case , through witness testimony and documentary evidence , that Zilis’s most consequential role, at least for this lawsuit, was that of a covert liaison between Musk and OpenAI, even years after he stepped down from the nonprofit’s board in February 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 for how to do right by you is appreciated,” Zilis texted Musk on February 16, 2018, just days before OpenAI announced his departure. Musk replied, “Close and friendly, 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 that exchange on the stand, Musk said simply, “I wanted to know what’s going on.”

In the same thread, Musk wrote, “There is little chance of OpenAI being a serious force if I focus on Tesla AI.” Zilis reinforced him, warning: “There is very low probability of a good future if someone doesn’t slow Demis down,” referring to Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, whom Musk has long distrusted to manage a superintelligent AI. “You don’t realize how much you have an ability to influence him directly or otherwise slow him down. I think you know I’m not a malicious person, but in this case it feels fundamentally irresponsible to not find a way to slow or alter his path.”

Two months later, in an email dated April 23, 2018, Zilis updated Musk on OpenAI’s fundraising efforts and a project to develop an AI capable of playing video games. She also noted she had shifted most of her time away from OpenAI to Neuralink and Tesla, but added, “If you’d prefer I pull more hours back to OpenAI oversight please let me know.”

Nearly a year earlier, in the summer of 2017, OpenAI’s cofounders had begun negotiating changes to the organization’s corporate structure , with Musk initially seeking control. In an email from August 28, 2017, Zilis reported to Musk that she had met with OpenAI president Greg Brockman and cofounder Ilya Sutskever to discuss how equity would be allocated in the new company. She summarized their view that no single person should have unilateral power over AGI, should they achieve it. Musk’s reply was terse: “This is very annoying. Please encourage them to go start a company. I’ve had enough.”