Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, testified at the federal Musk v. Altman trial in Oakland that Musk at one point considered offering Sam Altman a seat on Tesla’s board, according to CNBC and Bloomberg. Zilis said OpenAI’s corporate structure was debated “ad nauseam” in 2017 and 2018, per CNBC. WIRED reported that emails shown to the jury indicated Musk discussed recruiting Altman to a Tesla AI lab and offering a board seat. The dispute stems from Musk’s 2024 lawsuit alleging OpenAI and its executives broke promises about the organization’s nonprofit commitments, as reported by CNBC.
