Zilis works in the field of AI and rocketed to global notoriety after it was revealed that she had welcomed fraternal twins Strider and Azure, two, through IVF with Musk in November 2021. The name and sex of Musk and Zilis’ new baby is yet to be revealed.

Musk, 52, also shares five children with his first wife Justine Wilson, and three with ex-girlfriend Grimes – who sued Musk over parental rights in 2023.

But just who is Zilis, 38, the latest woman to have a baby with one of the world’s most controversial thinkers? Meet Zilis, the Canadian techie who plays ice hockey – and once met Prince Harry.

Shivon Zilis is an AI queen

Zilis’ bio on X (formerly Twitter) reveals that she is interested in artificial intelligence, biological intelligence and “whatever exists in between and beyond”. In 2011, she joined then emerging venture project Bloomberg Beta as a founding member. According to The Washington Post, Zilis was on the board of OpenAI, the well-known AI research organisation that Musk co-founded. She reportedly left the board in 2023, per New York Post.

She works at Neuralink

In 2021, Zilis spoke at the Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI and said she spent the last decade focusing on watching AI unfold “in the best way possible”, per Business Insider. She is an executive at Neuralink, which aimed to solve brain and spine problems. According to her, “AI’s going to be one of the fundamentally transformative technologies humanity creates”.

Zilis grew up in Canada and moved to the US, attending Yale University. She was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in the category of venture capital in 2015, as part of the investment team at Bloomberg Beta.

How did Shivon Zilis meet Elon Musk?

According to The Washington Post, she joined OpenAI as an adviser in 2016 and later became a board member. She also worked at Tesla for two years, where she focused on AI-led projects. It was through these projects that she met Musk.

Zilis is not shy to show her support of Musk on X, even once switching her timeline on the platform to a reverse chronological view, which Musk has advocated for. She also wrote on X of Musk in 2020, “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.” Underneath the post, Grimes posted a reply of a star emoji.

In 2023, US media reported that Musk, a vocal pronatalist, believes only smart people should procreate.

The statement was backed by an excerpt of Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography on the tech mogul titled Elon Musk, where Zilis was quoted saying, “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to. If the choice is between an anonymous sperm donor or doing it with the person you admire most in the world, for me that was a pretty f***ing easy decision.”

She’s met Prince Harry

Zilis wrote on X that she was asked to brief Prince Harry about tech start-ups back in 2013. She posted a picture of herself with Harry and said she was explaining how she got her watch through a crowdfunding campaign. She said that she was so nervous, that when the watch showed her pulse, it was at an elevated level of 145bpm. But Zilis also said Harry was a real gentlemen about it, adding that he was a “class act guy”.

What does her social media tell us about her?

Zilis often posts videos and pictures of herself at hockey games – she played the sport in Canada growing up, as well as later at Yale – or ice skating with her children. She also shared a photograph of herself with Musk and her twins in September 2023, with the caption: “That was a happy memory.”

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