Elon Musk’s partner Shivon Zilis testifies about their 4 children and OpenAI ownership dispute!

The WashingtonPost.com reported that “She had four kids with Elon Musk. Now she’s central to his courtroom fight. In hours of testimony, Elon Musk’s partner Shivon Zilis opened up about their relationship and her role in creating one of the world’s most valuable AI companies.”  The May 8, 2026 article entitled "She had four kids with Elon Musk. Now she’s central to his courtroom fight” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/05/08/shivon-zilis-elon-musk-trial/) included these comments:

For more than six years, the tech executive had worked largely outside the public eye as a trusted confidante to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his three co-founders at the artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI. But now, as the company’s recently launched ChatGPT soared, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had discovered that Musk was planning a rival AI venture and poaching talent from the start-up, according to federal court testimony this week.

Zilis, who served on OpenAI’s board and had secretly had two children with Musk, urgently texted a friend.

“Have to resign OpenAI board btw,” Zilis wrote in February 2023 to a person identified in her contacts as Shahini Rubicon Fluffer. Musk’s “effort has become well known.”

“You ok?” the friend responded, adding an expletive.

“When the father of your babies starts a competitive effort and will recruit out of OpenAI there is nothing to be done,” Zilis replied.

The exchange, released Wednesday during Zilis’s testimony in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, marked the culmination of the executive’s years-long high-wire act inside one of the world’s most influential companies. Her effort to balance her growing closeness with Musk against allegiances to others at the company and her duties as a board member have made her a central figure in a high-profile trial that pits Musk against his fellow OpenAI co-founders Altman and Greg Brockman. The billionaire claims the two men enriched themselves at the expense of the nonprofit’s mission to create AI that benefits all of humanity. His suit asks the court to remove them from their leadership positions and unwind OpenAI’s for-profit division.

Testimony from Zilis and others in the trial this week revealed the pivotal role she played behind the scenes as one of the few women involved in the ascent of the AI companies currently reshaping Silicon Valley and the wider economy. She was a key go-between as relationships between the co-founders grew increasingly strained, with Musk quitting OpenAI in 2018 and creating a rival AI company, xAI, five years later.

Along the way, Musk, initially her boss, became romantically entangled with Zilis before becoming her secret sperm donor and ultimately a public father who is involved with their children.

When she was asked in court this week about the current status of her relationship with Musk, Zilis said “we live together when traveling and when he is in Austin.” In his own testimony last week, Musk initially described her as his “chief of staff” and later added that the two live together. Zilis joined Musk’s suit against OpenAI in November 2024, but her name was later removed. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)

Interesting to see how this may impact the trial verdict!