OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California on Wednesday as part of Elon Musk's lawsuit seeking to reverse OpenAI's change to a for-profit company. Musk is asking the court to remove OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman from the company, award up to $180 billion in damages, and reverse OpenAI's restructuring.

Zilis joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016 and served as a director on its board from 2020 to 2023, while also holding executive positions at Tesla and Neuralink. She has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years.

According to court filings, discussions indicated that OpenAI's shift away from being a pure non-profit was considered necessary as early as 2017 to raise billions of dollars from investors. Brockman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever pushed for OpenAI to transition to a B Corp structure. Emails introduced in court showed that Musk wanted more control of OpenAI through additional board seats and suggested OpenAI become a subsidiary of Tesla.

Zilis wrote in an email that integrating OpenAI into Tesla "solves the funding issue immediately." According to court filings, Altman, Brockman and Sutskever could not agree on terms with Musk because they were adamant that he not have control of OpenAI's work. Musk launched xAI in March 2023 to develop a chatbot competing with OpenAI's ChatGPT, the same month Zilis left the OpenAI board.

OpenAI lawyers suggested in court filings that Zilis funneled information about the company to Musk after he left in 2018. "I had an allegiance to the best outcome of AI for humanity," Zilis said.

Zilis testified that she and Musk briefly started a romantic relationship after meeting in 2016, and she has four children fathered by him. Her twins were born in November 2021. Due to a confidentiality agreement, she did not disclose to Altman in 2021 that the twins were fathered by Musk, telling him in 2022 when she learned a Business Insider report was imminent.

Brockman testified that he only learned Musk was the father of the twins through news reports. "We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control," Brockman said. Zilis testified that she, Altman and Brockman remained friends until at least 2023.