Former OpenAI Board Member Details Personal Relationship with Elon Musk and Birth of Four Children

California. Former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis has revealed in court the details of her unique personal relationship with the world's richest person, Elon Musk, and how it led to the birth of four children.

Zilis testified for hours in a federal court in Oakland, California, on Wednesday during the hearing of a lawsuit filed by Musk against OpenAI's decision to turn it into a for-profit company.

Present in court, Zilis was questioned about her role in the initial discussions to make OpenAI for-profit and her relationship with Musk. During her testimony, she stated that around 2020, she wanted to become a mother, and at that time, Musk offered to donate sperm, which she accepted. Musk was encouraging everyone around him to have children at that time, and upon learning that Zilis had no children, he made this offer.

Zilis, who has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years, has held high executive positions at Musk's car company Tesla and his neurotechnology company Neuralink. She joined OpenAI as an advisor shortly after its founding in 2016, where she first met Musk. Later, she also became a director of OpenAI from 2020 to 2023.

OpenAI's lawyers have accused Musk of receiving confidential information about OpenAI from Zilis even after he left the company in 2018. However, Zilis clarified that she had a brief romantic relationship with Musk for a short period about a decade ago and that they were not in a romantic relationship when Musk proposed to become the father of her children in 2020. She stated that she accepted Musk's proposal after her plan to have children through traditional marriage failed due to health issues.

Initially, she did not plan to have Musk as an active father in the children's lives, and they had agreed to keep it completely secret. But now, Musk is active in the lives of all four of their children, and they spend a few hours together each week, Zilis said. She admitted that due to this confidentiality agreement, she did not inform OpenAI's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman that Musk was the father of her twins born in 2021.

She only informed Altman about this after learning in 2022 that the media outlet Business Insider was about to publish the story. However, Altman and OpenAI Chairman Greg Brockman wanted Zilis to continue on the board, and they had a good friendship until 2023. Brockman testified in court that they had full confidence in Zilis and were sure she would manage the conflict of interest with Musk.

Zilis left OpenAI's board in March 2023 after Musk founded XAI, a company developing a competitor chatbot to OpenAI. According to emails and messages shown in court, discussions about moving away from a non-profit structure to make OpenAI bigger and raise billions of dollars in investment began as early as 2017.

Musk wanted to increase his control over OpenAI and even proposed bringing it under Tesla, which Zilis also supported as it would immediately resolve the funding issues.