Shivon Zilis, former OpenAI Board member, reveals when Elon Musk offered to donate sperm

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk’s ongoing feud with OpenAI has also shed light onto his personal life. A former OpenAI board member has explained how her unconventional personal relationship with Musk evolved into having four of his children.

Shivon Zilis testified in a federal courtroom in California on Wednesday as part of Musk’s lawsuit trying to reverse OpenAI’s change to a for-profit company. The focus of Zilis’s appearance was her direct involvement in early talks with Musk around the company becoming a for-profit. It also involved her relationship with Musk as she advised OpenAI.

“I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted,” she said, explaining Musk had offered to donate sperm in 2020. “He was encouraging everyone around him at that time to have kids and he’d noticed I did not. He offered to make a donation,” Zilis was quoted as saying by BBC.
She first met Musk officially after joining OpenAI as an advisor in 2016, shortly after the company was founded. She has also held senior roles at Tesla and Neuralink, where Musk is CEO. She served as the director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023.

According to OpenAI, Zilis is accused of sharing company information with Musk after he left the AI firm in 2018. During testimony, Zilis said that she and Musk were involved romantically a decade ago and were not in a relationship in 2020.

She also told the court that she considered his offer as she was struggling with health issues which had affected her hopes of starting a family. She added that they originally planned to keep Musk’s role in their first two children’s lives private. There was also an agreement to keep his paternity ‘strictly confidential.’ However, she said that Musk is now actively involved with the four children.

According to her testimony, this agreement with Musk prevented her from revealing to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that the twins she gave birth to in 2021 were fathered by Musk.

Zilis said that she informed Altman in 2022 that Musk was the father of her children after learning that a media report regarding the same was about to be published. She said that Altman and Greg Brockman still supported her role at OpenAI. Zilis remained friendly with them until 2023 before leaving the board in March.