Who is Shivon Zilis? Meet the Elon Musk exec who said their relationship suddenly ended

Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis with their twins. Courtesy of Walter Isaacson AI investor and developer Shivon Zilis is a longtime executive at Elon Musk's companies. She said on X that her relationship with Musk went "from in love to let go." A director at Neuralink, Zilis is a plaintiff in the trial and has four children with Musk. Shivon Zilis — a longtime executive at Elon Musk's companies and the mother of four of his children — said her relationship with the billionaire ended "in a week with no warning." In a post on X, Zilis shared a rare glimpse into Musk's romantic life. "I feel happy that I got to show Elon how it feels to be deeply understood, nurtured, and peacefully loved with stability and gentleness," she wrote on Friday. "My heart is full knowing I got to do that, and I hope it leaves a lasting good effect." Zilis and her employer, the Musk-owned Neuralink, didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Musk also didn't respond. She joined Musk at OpenAI in 2016, a year after its founding, and helped helm the company during Musk's investment and his rancorous 2018 split with CEO Sam Altman. From there, Zilis followed Musk to Tesla and his rival project, xAI. She's now the director of operations and special projects at another of the billionaire's companies — Neuralink, a startup that makes computer chips designed to be implanted in the brain. Zilis is also the mother to four of Musk's children. Elon Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, shared a glimpse into Musk's relationship with Zilis in September 2023. In an excerpt from Isaacson's biography of the Tesla CEO and in a post on social media, he shared a photo of Musk and Zilis with their twins — who were 16 months old at the time — sitting on each of their laps. Walter Isaacson posted a photo of Elon Musk and Zilis on X. Walter Isaacson on X The biographer said the photo was taken when Musk ushered him to Zilis' house in Austin to talk about the threat AI posed to civilization. "We were sitting on a suburban patio by a tranquil backyard swimming pool on a sunny spring day, with two bright-eyed twins learning to toddle, as Musk somberly speculated about the window of opportunity for building a sustainable human colony on Mars before an AI apocalypse destroyed earthly civilization," Isaacson said of the scene. Here is more you need to know about Zilis: Zilis grew up in Ontario, Canada, and is a lifelong athlete Zilis was born in Markham, Ontario, and grew up playing ice hockey. She attended Yale University, where she played goalie on the women's ice hockey team. She graduated in 2008 with a degree in economics and philosophy. Photos from Zilis' social media accounts, which were taken down in 2022, show Zilis surfing, zip-lining, and ice climbing. She started her career in finance and venture capital After graduating from Yale, Zilis got a job at IBM, where she spent three years focused on financial technologies. She later joined early-stage venture capital fund Bloomberg Beta, where she led investment efforts in data and machine learning. Her work at Bloomberg Beta earned her a spot on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category in 2015. Tesla owners broke down the perks of owning a Tesla in conversations with Insider. Zilis worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019, contributing her AI expertise to the Autopilot and chip design teams. She's passionate about artificial intelligence Zilis developed an interest in artificial intelligence around the age of 12 or 13, when she learned about the concept from the Our Lady Peace album "Spiritual Machines." It led her to read a Ray Kurzweil book by a similar name and sparked her passion for AI, she said during a 2021 address at the Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI. "I've basically spent pretty much all of the last decade focused in and around AI unfolding in the world in the best way possible," she said. It was AI that led her to Musk: In 2016, Zilis joined OpenAI, a nonprofit co-founded by a group that included Musk and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman. OpenAI's stated mission is to find ways for AI to benefit humanity as a whole. The company made headlines when it released a new version of its AI chatbot, ChatGPT in 2023. Zilis and Musk share a love for fantasy and gaming Like Musk, Zilis appears to have a passion for fantasy and games in the genre. The Neuralink executive posted on X in May that "the fact that a visually rich and dynamic world can live and come alive on a laptop is insane." "We're so normalized to the magic of gaming," Zilis said in the post. "But, when you step back and think about it, it's absolutely wild." She also posted a photo on X in July of talismans from Elden Ring, a fantasy video game set in a world of dungeons and warriors, known for its challenging gameplay. The game is written by "A Song of Fire and Ice" author George RR Martin and produced by FromSoftware, the creators of Dark Souls. The talismans in the game have various powers, such as increasing bow range or stamina recovery. Zilis followed up with a response to the post and said the items were "not religious or witchcraft items." She also added that they have "resonance" for her in the game, "but also to keep in mind as priorities for real life (whether literally or through analogy)." Musk also enjoys playing Elden Ring — to the point where he's reportedly stayed up till 5:30 a.m. playing it. She has a high-level role at Neuralink In 2017, Zilis joined Neuralink, the futuristic brain microchip company also cofounded by Musk. Neuralink has a short-term goal of using implantable devices to solve brain and spine problems, and a long-term mission of achieving "symbiosis" between artificial intelligence and the human brain, according to Musk. Zilis is a director at Neuralink. Photo In her presentation at the Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI in 2021, Zilis called Neuralink the most "complicated but also fascinating thing I've ever encountered in my life." "AI's going to be one of the fundamentally transformative technologies humanity creates, if not the most," she said. "And so we just need to make sure, from a humanity perspective, this goes well." In January, Noland Arbaugh became the first human patient to receive a Neuralink brain implant. Zilis has defended Musk from critics In 2020, Musk publicly sparred with the state of California over its COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, calling them "fascist" and "forcible imprisoning." He pledged that Tesla's headquarters would relocate to Texas as a result, prompting California State Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher to tweet, "F*ck Elon Musk." Zilis responded on Twitter, writing that Gonzalez Fletcher's tweet made her sad. "No one's perfect but I've never met anyone who goes through more personal pain to fight for an inspiring future for humanity - and has done so tirelessly for decades," Zilis wrote. "Everyone's entitled to their opinion but mine is that there's no one I respect and admire more." This year, she testified at Musk's civil trial against OpenAI's Sam Altman. The trial centered on Musk's claims that Altman took his $38 million early investment in the company behind ChatGPT, then reneged on his promise that it would remain solely nonprofit. Zillis, who joined Musk as a plaintiff in the $134 billion lawsuit that led to the trial, was a key witness, having had a front-row seat to many of the events before the six-member jury. Zilis had twins with Musk in 2021 and bought a house in Austin Business Insider was the first to report that Zilis had twins with the Tesla CEO, who were born in 2021. In 2022, Zilis and Musk filed a petition to change the twins' names in order to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name," according to court documents obtained by Business Insider. Zilis purchased a home in a gated community in Austin in August 2021. Tesla's Gigafactory is located near Austin, and court documents obtained by Business Insider list Musk and Zilis as residents of that address. Musk, however, has said that his primary residence is a $50,000 Tesla tiny house in Boca Chica, near the SpaceX launch facility in South Texas. She is one of several women who have children with Musk There are eight other known living children of Musk aside from those fathered with Zilis: Five are with Musk's first wife, Justine Wilson, and three are with Musk's former girlfriend, the musician Grimes. The billionaire has said in the past that he's doing his best to help the "underpopulation crisis." Zilis and Musk's twins were born a few weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate. Musk and Grimes later had a third child in June 2022, according to a 2023 biography of Musk. Read the original article on Business Insider

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