A former OpenAI board member told a federal court this week that Elon Musk offered to father her children in 2020, adding a striking personal layer to the already high stakes legal fight over OpenAI’s future. Shivon Zilis gave the testimony Wednesday in Oakland, California, where Musk is suing OpenAI and its leaders over the company’s move away from its original nonprofit structure.
Zilis said she wanted to become a mother and accepted what she described as Musk’s offer to act as a sperm donor. According to reporting on her testimony, she told the court that Musk was encouraging people around him to have children and offered to “make a donation.”
Why Zilis matters in the OpenAI case
Zilis is not a side character in this lawsuit. She advised OpenAI early in its history, later served on its board from 2020 to 2023, and also worked in top roles at Musk-linked companies including Tesla and Neuralink. That overlap makes her a central witness in the case because she sat close to both Musk and OpenAI during the years when the company’s structure was changing.
Musk’s lawsuit argues that OpenAI betrayed its founding mission by shifting toward a for-profit model and growing closer to major commercial backing. Reuters reported that Musk is seeking sweeping changes at OpenAI and $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft.
What Zilis said about her relationship with Musk
Zilis testified that she and Musk had a brief romantic connection about a decade ago, but she said they were not romantically involved in 2020 when he offered to father her children. Reporting on the testimony says she described the arrangement at first as private and practical rather than romantic.
She also said she had been dealing with health issues that changed her earlier hopes of having children through a more traditional path. Her initial understanding, according to the testimony, was that Musk would not necessarily play an active father role. Today, she said, he is actively involved in the lives of their four children.
How the relationship intersected with OpenAI
One of the most important parts of Zilis’s testimony was not only the family story, but what she did and did not tell OpenAI while serving on its board. She said she kept Musk’s paternity confidential at first and did not tell OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman until 2022, when she learned that a report on the children was about to become public.
That matters because OpenAI’s lawyers have suggested Zilis may have acted as an information channel to Musk after he left OpenAI in 2018. Zilis has denied improperly sharing confidential company information, and reporting says Altman and Greg Brockman still wanted her to remain on the board after learning about the situation.
The bigger fight inside the courtroom
The trial itself is about much more than one personal relationship. It is a battle over whether OpenAI abandoned the nonprofit mission it had when Musk helped launch it. Evidence shown in court, according to recent coverage, includes years of emails and texts about whether OpenAI should become a for-profit company or tie itself more closely to Tesla.
Zilis’s testimony appears to support one important point that has emerged in the trial: pressure to move away from a pure nonprofit structure existed years ago, and Musk himself was part of some of those early discussions. That is an inference based on the trial reporting describing internal exchanges about becoming a B Corp or another for-profit structure.
Why this testimony is drawing so much attention
The case was already one of the most watched fights in tech because it pits Musk against Sam Altman and OpenAI over power, money, and control of advanced artificial intelligence. But Zilis’s testimony pushed the trial into even more personal territory by showing how closely professional loyalties and private life became intertwined.
That is likely why the testimony spread so quickly beyond legal and tech circles. It is not just a corporate governance dispute anymore. It is also a story about trust, secrecy, and the unusual personal dynamics around one of the most influential people in the AI industry. That is an inference based on the way major outlets framed her role as central to both the legal and personal dimensions of the case.
What happens next
The Oakland trial is expected to continue for several weeks, with more testimony from top OpenAI figures and others tied to the company’s structure and leadership decisions. Reuters reported that the case is being overseen by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and remains a major test of how the courts view OpenAI’s evolution from its founding model.
Readers can follow the broader trial through Reuters’ ongoing case coverage and more on Zilis’s courtroom account through The Washington Post. For now, Zilis’s testimony has done one thing clearly: it has turned a complex AI business trial into a story that is suddenly much more human and much harder to ignore.