OpenAI Trial: Lawyers Say Shivon Zilis Served as Musk's Covert Eyes Inside the Company

By Hector Herrera | May 2, 2026 | Legal

OpenAI's legal team presented evidence at trial that Shivon Zilis — a longtime Elon Musk employee and mother of four of his children — acted as a covert intelligence channel between Musk and OpenAI after he left the board in 2018. A single text message from February 2018 has become the centerpiece of that argument, and it is direct enough to require no interpretation.

Background

Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and served on its board until February 2018, when he departed amid reported disagreements over control of the organization. The current lawsuit, Musk v. Altman, centers on Musk's claim that OpenAI violated its founding commitments by pursuing a for-profit path. OpenAI's defense has increasingly focused on Musk's own conduct — including his alleged attempts to retain informal influence over the company after his formal exit.

Shivon Zilis has long been a figure at the intersection of Musk's world and the AI industry. She led AI and machine learning projects at Tesla and later became an executive at Neuralink, Musk's brain-computer interface company. She is also the mother of four of Musk's children.

What the Evidence Shows

OpenAI's lawyers presented a text message Zilis sent to Musk in February 2018 — the same month he departed the board. The message, as reported by Wired via Intellectia AI, reads:

"Do you prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing or begin to disassociate?"

Musk's reply, according to the evidence presented: stay close.

The timeline is significant:

• 2018: Musk leaves OpenAI board; Zilis sends the "info flowing" text
• 2020: Zilis joins OpenAI's nonprofit board
• 2023: Zilis leaves OpenAI's nonprofit board
• Throughout this period, she was simultaneously employed by Musk's ventures

OpenAI's lawyers argue this sequence demonstrates that Zilis served not as an independent board member with fiduciary duties to OpenAI, but as a conduit for Musk — giving him ongoing visibility into the organization he had formally left.

The Legal Stakes

The allegation matters for several reasons.

Fiduciary duty. Nonprofit board members owe a duty of loyalty to the organization, not to outside parties. If Zilis was actively channeling information to a former board member who later became an adversary, that would represent a significant breach of that duty — one that could affect the trial's assessment of OpenAI's own governance and Musk's.

Musk's standing. Musk's lawsuit argues OpenAI betrayed its founding mission. OpenAI's counterargument has been that Musk himself behaved improperly — attempting to control the organization, then suing it when he couldn't. Evidence of a covert information network strengthens that counter-narrative.

The broader governance question. OpenAI is currently in the middle of a complex conversion from a nonprofit with a for-profit subsidiary to a full public benefit corporation. Its governance structure is under intense scrutiny from regulators, donors, and the public. Any evidence of past governance failures adds pressure to that process.

What to Watch

OpenAI's lawyers have signaled they have more evidence about Musk's conduct during and after his board tenure. Watch for whether Zilis is called as a witness and whether the "info flowing" text is corroborated by additional messages or testimony. Musk's legal team will likely argue the text was informal and the relationship benign — how the court interprets intent will determine how much weight the evidence carries.

The trial is also producing a factual record that will outlast the verdict. Whatever the legal outcome, the portrait emerging of OpenAI's early years is one where personal relationships, power struggles, and informal influence channels shaped what was supposed to be a structured governance framework.

Source: Intellectia AI / Wired — Musk v. Altman OpenAI Trial, Shivon Zilis Liaison Allegation