Zilis, an executive at Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink, served on OpenAI’s board from 2020 to 2023
Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI between 2016 and 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.
Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.
OpenAI rejects all of Musk’s allegations and over the course of the trial, now in its second week, has tried to prove that he was always on board with the intentions to shift to a for-profit structure. The company’s lawyers have argued that Musk was essentially a sore loser who left the company in 2018 after a failed bid for control and was seeking vengeance due to OpenAI’s success.
