Musk Directed Zilis to Move OpenAI Staff to Tesla, Jury Hears in Evidence
In 2018, Shivon Zilis texted Elon Musk asking whether she should stay close to OpenAI's board to keep information flowing, or distance herself. Musk's reply, introduced as evidence Wednesday: "Close and friendly, but we are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla." That exchange — not the corporate governance arguments the jury has already heard — is the newest fact in the Musk v. Altman trial, and it is why Zilis's testimony matters.
Zilis, who served on OpenAI's board from 2020 to 2023 while simultaneously working at Tesla, took the stand Wednesday in the trial pitting Musk against Sam Altman and OpenAI's leadership. She is not a defendant, but her account sits at the seam between the two organizations the jury is being asked to evaluate. Under cross-examination, OpenAI's lawyers sought to establish that her role had been more complicated than a standard board member: she was simultaneously an executive at one of Musk's companies, in a relationship with him, and is the mother of four of his children. The texts — her question about staying close, his instruction to keep friendly and move people — are the most concrete evidence either side has presented about what Zilis knew, what she was asked to do, and when.
The texts also undercut a clean narrative on either side. OpenAI's lawyers argue Musk is an aggrieved former co-founder who left in 2018 after a failed bid for control and is now suing out of wounded pride. Musk's team argues Altman and Brockman breached their fiduciary duty to a nonprofit by converting it into a commercial enterprise. The Zilis texts show that Musk was thinking about staffing and information flow inside OpenAI after he left the board — and that his preferred solution involved absorbing people into his own company. The jury heard a version of the same tension on Tuesday, when former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati testified that Altman had made a false statement about a safety review — as Reuters reported, Altman created chaos and at times was deceptive with executives.
Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president, also testified Wednesday that his stake in the company is worth approximately $30 billion — personal wealth that exists because OpenAI restructured around a commercial arm. He and former board member Ilya Sutskever had refused Musk's demand for control of the organization. "They didn't want Musk — or anyone — to have control over OpenAI," according to The Verge's live coverage. Separately, emails showed Zilis advocated in 2017 wrapping OpenAI into Tesla, writing that "Tesla solves the funding issue immediately," as CNBC reported.
The restructuring that followed those early debates — placing a for-profit subsidiary under the control of the original nonprofit parent — is the legal mechanism at the center of the case. Under California nonprofit law, converting charitable assets into commercial enterprise requires the board to act in the charity's sole interest, conduct arm's-length negotiations, and obtain fair market valuations before transferring assets to related entities. OpenAI's restructuring is now the subject of expert testimony about whether those duties were followed.
David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia Law School retained by Musk's legal team as an expert on nonprofit law, is scheduled to testify Thursday about those requirements. His testimony will establish what OpenAI's board was legally obligated to do — and whether the restructuring violated its duties. That matters because Musk is seeking $150 billion, a figure that reflects alleged harm from OpenAI's departure from its charitable purpose, not any direct financial injury to Musk himself. The damages theory transforms the case from a question about whether Altman lied in individual instances into a structural question about whether the entire commercial conversion was designed to benefit its architects. OpenAI is expected to present its own expert rebuttal on nonprofit governance standards.
The settlement attempt adds a complication for Musk's credibility as a principle-driven plaintiff. Musk contacted Brockman on April 25 to gauge interest in a resolution, according to CNN Business — two days before the trial began. Outreach on the eve of a case premised on nonprofit duty, from a plaintiff seeking $150 billion in alleged charitable harm, reads differently to a jury than a lawsuit filed on principle. Reuters separately reported that Musk at one point felt like a "fool" for continuing to fund OpenAI — language OpenAI's lawyers are expected to use to suggest the lawsuit reflects wounded pride rather than genuine concern for the nonprofit's mission.
Zilis is scheduled to continue her testimony Thursday, overlapping with Schizer's appearance on nonprofit law. The combination may give the jury both the human account of what the board knew and the legal framework for assessing what it was supposed to do.