The high-stakes lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI has entered a critical phase, with this week's court proceedings revealing a series of evidence contradicting Musk's previous testimony, making the direction of the case increasingly unpredictable.
Shivon Zilis, who shares four children with Musk, testified on Wednesday. A former OpenAI board member, she served as a communication link between Musk and OpenAI's management.
On the core dispute of the case, Zilis testified that OpenAI's executives engaged in "repeated and contentious" discussions about the company's structure, during which various for-profit models were explored. At one point, Musk wanted to merge OpenAI into Tesla Motors and offered Sam Altman a seat on the Tesla Motors board as part of the proposal.
This testimony directly addresses the central allegation in Musk's lawsuit – that Altman and Greg Brockman betrayed a promise to maintain OpenAI's non-profit nature.
Zilis's testimony also indicated that Musk, while still serving on OpenAI's board, attempted to recruit talent away from the company – a point that differs from his prior statements. Evidence submitted during the trial further showed that Musk unilaterally froze donations to OpenAI during a period when it was considering establishing a for-profit arm, without notifying the other co-founders.
**Zilis Testimony: Contentious Structure Debate, Musk Proposed Merging OpenAI into Tesla**
Zilis stated in court that her primary role at OpenAI was to act as a liaison between Musk, Altman, Greg Brockman, and another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever. She testified that discussions among the four about corporate governance structure were "contentious" and involved various different for-profit options.
At one stage of the negotiations, Musk proposed bringing OpenAI under the Tesla Motors umbrella and offered Altman a board seat at Tesla Motors. This suggests that Musk himself was not always steadfastly committed to OpenAI's purely non-profit stance and had actively explored integrating the company via a commercial path.
Musk ultimately left OpenAI in 2018. Subsequently, OpenAI established a for-profit subsidiary, which is the central focus of Musk's current lawsuit. He filed the suit in 2024, alleging that Altman and Brockman violated the original commitment to maintain OpenAI's non-profit mission.
During his own earlier court appearance, Musk stated he wasn't entirely opposed to OpenAI having a for-profit division, but claimed it had become dominant and repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of trying to "steal a charity."
**Evidence Shows Musk Secretly Froze Donations, Actively Recruited Staff**
Documentary evidence presented during the trial directly contradicted some of Musk's previous testimony. Text messages and email records showed that Musk quietly stopped regular donations while OpenAI was considering launching for-profit operations, without informing his co-founders.
According to communications from August 2017 between Zilis and another Musk employee, Sam Teller, Zilis referred to a "freeze on funds" and wrote that OpenAI would "probably realize this week" that $5 million for the quarter was on hold, adding "if they find out, it could be quite a psychological blow for them."
On the issue of recruiting staff, Musk had previously testified that Andrej Karpathy, who left OpenAI to lead the Tesla Motors Autopilot team, was already planning to leave OpenAI and that he (Musk) had not actively solicited him.
However, when OpenAI's lawyers showed Zilis text message records indicating she had congratulated Musk on his offer to Karpathy and Karpathy's acceptance, Zilis acknowledged that Musk had initiated contact with Karpathy first.
In February 2018, after the plan to merge OpenAI into Tesla Motors had clearly fallen through, Zilis texted Musk asking if he wanted her to remain closely connected to the OpenAI team. Musk replied:
"Stay friendly, but we will proactively try to hire 3-4 people from OpenAI. More will come over time, but we won't actively recruit them."
**Musk vs. OpenAI: From a Proposed AI Lab to xAI**
Evidence also revealed that Musk considered creating an artificial intelligence lab within Tesla Motors to compete directly with OpenAI and even Alphabet's DeepMind, but Zilis testified that this lab plan ultimately never materialized.
Musk later founded the independent AI company xAI in 2023. He stated on Wednesday that xAI had merged with SpaceX and is now called SpacexAI.
In a personal footnote to the situation, Zilis texted a friend on February 25, 2023, as news began to circulate that Musk was about to launch an OpenAI competitor, writing:
"When the father of your children starts a competitive effort and will be hiring from OpenAI, there's just nothing to be done."
**Zilis's Dual Role: Board Member and Mother of Musk's Children**
The personal relationship between Zilis and Musk was also detailed in court. She testified that she began working with OpenAI in an informal advisory capacity in 2016, which is how she met Musk.
She subsequently held positions at several of Musk's companies, including OpenAI, Tesla Motors, and the brain-computer interface company Neuralink, and served on the OpenAI board from 2020 to 2023 – a period after Musk had already left the company.
The two share several children, but Zilis stated that she signed a non-disclosure agreement with Musk regarding his "donation" and agreed to "complete confidentiality," partly to protect the children from security risks associated with Musk and partly because Musk initially did not plan to be actively involved in parenting.
Zilis said that after learning media outlets were investigating the story, she felt compelled to proactively inform Altman that Musk was the father of her children.
After learning of this complex personal relationship, OpenAI allowed Zilis to retain her board seat, but she ultimately resigned in 2023 as news began to spread that Musk was preparing to launch a competitor.
