Who is Shivon Zilis? Meet the Neuralink exec and AI expert who reportedly had a third child with Elon Musk

• Shivon Zilis reportedly welcomed a third child with Elon Musk earlier this year.
• Business Insider first reported that Musk quietly had twins with Zilis in November 2021.
• Zilis, 38, is a director at Neuralink and has had a successful career in venture capital and AI. 

Elon Musk quietly had another child with Shivon Zilis earlier this year, according to a Bloomberg report published Friday.

It’s the third child Musk has had with Zilis. Business Insider first reported that she 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 BI.

Their personal relationship was unknown prior to the report, although Zilis worked in the billionaire’s orbit for several years. She’s the director of operations and special projects at one of the billionaire’s companies — Neuralink, a startup that makes computer chips designed to be implanted in the brain.

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 on 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.

Zilis worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019, lending 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 late last year when it released a new version of its AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

Zilis was the youngest member of OpenAI’s board of directors until she stepped down in March 2023, The Information reported.

Zilis and Musk share a love for fantasy and gaming

Similar to Musk, who is known for his fondness for video games, Zilis also 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 involving dungeons and warriors and known for its challenging play. 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 hold various powers, like the ability to increase bow range or recovery stamina. 

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.  

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, which prompted 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.”

Zilis had twins with Musk in 2021 and bought a house in Austin

Zilis purchased a home in a gated community in Austin in August 2021 — the real-estate website Zillow estimates the home is worth more than $4 million.

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. 

Zilis and Musk’s twins were born in November 2021, a few weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate. Musk and Grimes later had a third in June 2022, according to a biography of Musk that came out in 2023.

Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, said on X that communication about Zilis’ twins “wasn’t handled super well.”  Musk’s biographer said in an excerpt from his book that Grimes was initially “outraged” that she found out about Musk and Zilis’ twins at the same time the public did. In September 2023, in a since-deleted post on X Grimes accused Zilis of blocking her on social media.

“I have never been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart,” Grimes wrote on X and later deleted.

The pair later appeared to make amends on X and Grimes said she now understands what happened.

“I spoke with Shivon at length finally, which was long overdue. This wasn’t her fault, plz don’t be angry at her! We respect each other a lot and we’re excited to become friends and have the kids grow up together,” Grimes wrote on X in September 2023.

Zilis’ responded to Grimes post saying: “I can’t wait for kiddo play date and congrats on baby Tau as well,” referencing Grimes’ third child with Musk.

The Neuralink director also frequently posts about her children on X. She posted a video in May of one of her kids responding “Tesla” when Musk pointed to a Tesla sign and asked what it said.