OpenAI Trial Week Two Brings Bombshell Testimony From Musk Insider
CNBC reported Thursday that a close personal confidante of Elon Musk told a federal court he once offered OpenAI trial testimony has now confirmed he pitched Sam Altman a seat on Tesla’s board. The offer was part of a broader push to fold OpenAI into the electric vehicle company entirely.
A Witness at the Center of Two Worlds
Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and the mother of four of Musk’s children, took the stand Wednesday in Oakland, California. She described serving as a liaison between Musk, Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, and co-founder Ilya Sutskever during a critical 2017-2018 period. Zilis testified that OpenAI’s corporate structure was debated exhaustively, with executives cycling through numerous for-profit configurations. At one point, Musk’s preferred solution was straightforward: absorb OpenAI into Tesla and give Altman a board seat there.
Funding Freezes and Talent Raids
Text messages and emails entered as evidence painted a more combative picture of Musk’s conduct while still a board member. Zilis described a situation in 2017 where Musk quietly froze roughly $5 million in quarterly funding without telling his co-founders. Her messages at the time warned the funding pause would have a serious psychological effect on the OpenAI team once discovered. Separately, February 2018 messages showed Musk explicitly instructing Zilis to remain friendly with OpenAI staff while he moved to recruit several people away to Tesla. Zilis also conceded under cross-examination that Musk approached star researcher Andrej Karpathy directly before Karpathy left to lead Tesla’s Autopilot division, contradicting Musk’s earlier claim that Karpathy was already planning to leave independently.
Background: A Lawsuit Three Years in the Making
Musk filed suit against OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman in 2024, arguing the trio abandoned the nonprofit mission he helped establish when he co-founded the company in 2015. OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary after Musk departed in 2018. That transition sits at the heart of the legal dispute. Musk testified earlier in proceedings that he was not entirely opposed to a commercial arm but believed profit motives eventually overwhelmed the organization’s original purpose.
Week Two Draws Toward a Close
The trial wrapped its second week Thursday with several high-profile witnesses still potentially on the docket. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Altman himself could yet be called. Brockman testified earlier in the week, offering his own account of OpenAI’s founding history that pushed back on Musk’s characterizations. The case is being closely watched across the technology and legal communities as a test of how enforceable early-stage nonprofit commitments are when companies scale rapidly.
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