Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that Shivon Zilis, his partner and an executive at the neurotechnology company Neuralink, has some Indian ancestry.During a podcast conversation with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, he mentioned that his partner Shivon is of mixed heritage, with half of her background being Indian. He explained that she was placed for adoption and raised in Canada.
Musk revealed that one of his sons carries the middle name 'Sekhar' as an homage to Indian-American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He explained, 'One of my sons with her has the middle name Sekar, in honor of Chandra Sekar.'
He and Zilis share four children: twins named Strider and Azure, a daughter called Arcadia, and a son named Seldon Lycurgus.
Who is Shivon Zilis?
Born in 1986 in Ontario, Canada, Shivon Zilis holds citizenship in both Canada and the United States. She attended Yale University, where she majored in economics and philosophy. During her time there, she served as a goalkeeper for the Yale Bulldogs women's ice hockey team and also tried out for the fencing team. She completed her degree in 2008.
Zilis started her professional journey at IBM before transitioning to Bloomberg Beta, Bloomberg LP’s venture capital division. There, she contributed to internal startups and collaborations, focused on early-stage investments in machine intelligence, and played a key role as a founding member.
She was also a fellow at the University of Toronto's Creative Destruction Lab, where she mentored startups specializing in deep technology and artificial intelligence. In 2015, Forbes recognized her in its '30 Under 30' list for venture capital, honoring her groundbreaking contributions to AI.
Shivon Zilis became part of OpenAI in 2016, an organization co-founded by Elon Musk, and soon became its youngest board member, serving until her resignation in March 2023. She first met Musk while working at OpenAI and later engaged in his other companies, such as Neuralink and Tesla. The two are now parents to four children.
In 2017, Zilis became part of Neuralink, Elon Musk's neurotechnology firm dedicated to creating brain-machine interfaces. She took on the role of director of operations and special projects, overseeing initial development and strategic operations. By September 2023, she had joined the board of Shield AI, a defense technology company specializing in AI systems for aircraft.