By Becky Peterson and Angel Au-Yeung
Elon Musk's romantic partner Shivon Zilis took the stand in court on Wednesday for questioning on whether she "funneled" information to Musk while sitting on the board of OpenAI.
"I had an allegiance to the best outcome of AI for humanity," Zilis said early in her testimony in Oakland, Calif. An OpenAI executive accused Zilis of failing to disclose that Musk was the father of her twins while she was a director for the organization.
Zilis, 40, met Musk through OpenAI in 2016, where she volunteered as an advisor. She joined the board in 2020 after Musk had stopped donating money to the nonprofit as the center of the legal dispute.
Lawyers for OpenAI and testimony from its executives have painted Zilis as a close adviser to Musk and a proxy for him, who was often consulted when it was difficult to reach Musk directly.
Musk's team and Zilis have insisted that Zilis acted independently, despite working for Musk's companies Tesla and Neuralink, and having children with the entrepreneur during her time on the OpenAI board.
Musk is suing OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, for allegedly manipulating him into giving $38 million to a nonprofit, only for the company to turn itself into a for-profit venture.
The stakes are high for the AI lab and its executives. Musk is asking the courts to remove Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles as well as up to $180 billion in damages from OpenAI's for-profit arm to its nonprofit parent. Musk is also asking the courts to unwind a recent conversion that OpenAI conducted to a more traditional corporate governance structure. If even one of those remedies is granted, it could upend the company and the rest of the artificial-intelligence industry with it.
OpenAI has said that Musk not only knew about the plan to create a for-profit structure, but that he supported it and requested unilateral control of the venture.
Zilis testified that she initially joined OpenAI through her work in the AI non-profit space. She was consulting for the company when she met Musk in 2016 and the two briefly started a romantic relationship. She later worked across Musk's companies Tesla and Neuralink, as well as OpenAI.
She left the board in 2023 after Musk started xAI. By then, the pair had three children together. They went on to have a fourth.
In his testimony on Tuesday, Brockman said that Zilis initially hid that Musk was the father of her children. Brockman said he learned from Zilis that she gave birth to twins and later found out Musk was the father through public reporting. When he asked Zilis about it, she said it was via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and that their relationship was platonic, according to his testimony.
Zilis spoke methodically throughout her testimony, but she sounded emotional while describing autoimmune issues which had made it difficult to stay in long-term relationships. She said Musk offered to donate sperm to get her pregnant around 2020 because he wanted everyone around him to have more children. She said she initially kept Musk's paternity confidential to protect the children from security threats but came out to OpenAI's board after a news story in 2022 revealed his paternity.
He has since taken on a more active role as a father to their four children. Musk has had at least 14 children with four women.
In his testimony last week, Musk said that he lives with Zilis. He also has described her publicly as his "partner," and the pair have been photographed at events together, including at the White House.
Altman and Brockman's potential business conflicts also came up during Zilis's testimony. Zilis recounted an OpenAI board meeting during which the AI lab was considering striking a deal with nuclear fusion startup Helion. Brockman and Altman both hold significant stakes in the startup.
Zilis testified she told the board she was concerned about the deal because the technology was "not proven." The startup also had no working product at the time, Zilis said.
It was Zilis's belief then that more than chips, software or employees, the main bottleneck for building powerful models would be the actual amount of power required. If power was the "most important input" then "why would we place a bet on speculative tech," Zilis said in her testimony.
Asked whether Brockman and Altman recused themselves from discussions about a deal with Helion during the board meeting, Zilis said yes "but they were still in the room."
OpenAI has made the case that Musk previously bought into the idea of converting OpenAI into a for-profit and even instructed his longtime fixer, Jared Birchall, to create a legal corporation to house the new company.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Write to Becky Peterson at becky.peterson@wsj.com and Angel Au-Yeung at angel.au-yeung@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 06, 2026 15:24 ET (19:24 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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