Former OpenAI board member says Elon Musk offered her sperm donations

A former OpenAI director testified that Elon Musk offered to donate sperm to her in 2020, a disclosure made during a lawsuit over the AI company's corporate structure [1]. Shivon Zilis, a venture capitalist and former executive at Musk's Tesla and Neuralink, said Musk made the offer after noticing she did not have children [1]. "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 testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California [1]. She said she accepted, explaining she had wanted to be a mother and her health issues had altered her initial plans for a traditional family path [1]. Zilis stated she had a "one-off" romance with Musk about a decade prior but was not romantically involved with him in 2020 [1]. The two initially agreed to keep his paternity of their first two children "strictly confidential," a reason Zilis gave for not immediately disclosing the relationship to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [1]. Musk is now an active participant in the lives of his four children with Zilis [1]. Zilis served as an OpenAI director from 2020 to 2023, and her testimony is central to Musk's lawsuit seeking to reverse OpenAI's shift to a for-profit model [1]. Emails presented in court show Zilis relayed Musk's desire for more control of OpenAI, including a suggestion it become part of Tesla [1]. She noted in a written exchange that such a move "solves the funding issue immediately" [1]. Ultimately, OpenAI's founders could not agree with Musk, largely because they were adamant he "not have control" of the company's work, according to Zilis's correspondence [1].