OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has asked a federal judge to lean on two of Elon Musk’s closest business associates: wealth manager Jared Birchall and Neuralink director of operations Shivon Zilis, mother to four of the Tesla tycoon’s children.
As part of his defense against Musk’s 2024 racketeering lawsuit, Altman wants a judge in California to order Birchall and Zilis to turn over key texts and emails in 72 hours. If either blows that deadline, they should be required to sit for one additional, preliminary deposition prior to their primary depositions in the case.
US District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hinton is presiding over document and evidence issues in the contentious case and has yet to decide if he needs to step in and issue the court order Altman wants.
But the judge has given Zilis and Birchall until Friday to have their lawyers — who are also Musk’s lawyers — file a status update to aid in his decision.
The lawyers representing Musk, Zilis, Birchall, and Musk didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
In court filings, both sides agree that Zilis and Birchall are two of the most important witnesses in the case. Both are close Musk advisors holding multiple executive roles in his companies.
Birchall is a financial advisor who runs Musk’s family office, Excession. He also directs the Musk Foundation and is CEO of Neuralink, Musk’s brain-chip company, his lawyers said in court papers this month.
Zilis is a former OpenAI director and current operations director at Neuralink. In February, she announced on X that she and Musk were the parents of a second son, in addition to their four-year-old twin son and daughter, and their one-year-old daughter.
The fight over the Zilis and Birchall evidence is one of several pretrial skirmishes in the larger Musk v. Altman legal war.
Musk sued his former partner and OpenAI cofounder last year. The lawsuit alleges Altman and OpenAI’s for-profit arm are raking in millions through a self-dealing, “unregulated merger” with Microsoft, which profits from OpenAI’s technology under an exclusive licensing agreement.
Part of the sprawling lawsuit is due to go to trial in Oakland in late March, when, barring a settlement or intervening judicial ruling, a jury will hear Musk’s “unlawful conversion” claim.
Musk alleges that he invested $40 million into OpenAI’s development only to see it be improperly converted from a purely altruistic, nonprofit research lab into a for-profit enterprise in partnership with software behemoth Microsoft.
Altman has countered that Musk can’t complain because he, too, tried to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit — under his exclusive control — back in 2017.
That’s a matter Altman hopes Zilis’s text history will shed light on, Altman’s side argued earlier this month.
“She was a conduit between Musk and OpenAI’s co-founders on matters central to this case, including discussions about a potential 2017 restructuring that would have given Musk a large equity stake in OpenAI,” Altman’s legal team argued.
Once turned over, Zilis’s emails with Musk and other cofounders, sought since April, may reveal details of OpenAI’s 2019 creation of a for-profit arm, Altman’s lawyers also argued.
Musk’s lawyers say a huge cache of texts and emails has already been turned over, including communications from three work email accounts for Birchall and from three work email accounts, plus texts, from Zilis.
“Birchall and Zilis should not be forced to sit for two depositions each,” the Musk lawyers argued.
“If their texts and Gmails cannot be produced in time, their depositions should be rescheduled,” they wrote. Depositions are currently set for later this month.
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