OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, has formally petitioned a federal court to exert pressure on two of Elon Musk’s most trusted confidants—Jared Birchall, the veteran wealth manager who oversees Musk’s sprawling financial interests, and Shivon Zilis, the Neuralink operations director who is also the mother of four of Musk’s children. Altman’s request, lodged within the ongoing and highly publicized racketeering lawsuit filed by Musk in 2024, is an attempt to obtain crucial communications that he believes may illuminate key aspects of their business relationship and the disputed history of OpenAI. Specifically, Altman has urged a California judge to compel Birchall and Zilis to deliver within seventy‑two hours a collection of text messages and email exchanges considered materially significant to his defense. Should either fail to meet this strict deadline, Altman contends that they ought to be compelled to attend an additional, preliminary deposition in advance of their already scheduled primary depositions. This measure, he argues, would ensure that the evidentiary record is complete and that potential gaps caused by missing documentation are appropriately addressed before the central hearings take place.
Oversight of these evidence‑related motions currently rests with U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hinton, who is managing the thorny procedural disputes that have arisen in what has quickly become one of the most contentious legal confrontations in contemporary Silicon Valley. Judge Hinton has not yet determined whether he will formally intervene and issue the order sought by Altman; however, he has established an immediate procedural directive: both Zilis and Birchall have been instructed to ensure that their legal representatives—who also happen to serve as attorneys for Musk himself—provide a comprehensive status update by Friday. This court‑mandated filing is expected to shed light on whether compliance with Altman’s request is feasible and will aid Judge Hinton in deciding whether to impose judicial authority on the matter. Notably, when reporters sought comment from the attorneys representing Musk, Zilis, and Birchall, those inquiries went unanswered, underscoring the secrecy and heightened sensitivities surrounding the litigation.
Court filings from both adversarial camps leave no doubt as to the significance of these two individuals. Zilis and Birchall are indisputably among the most influential advisors in Musk’s inner circle, entrusted not only with executive responsibilities at several of his enterprises but also with direct access to his most private communications and decisions. Birchall, for instance, is not merely a financial consultant but the person who directs Musk’s family office, Excession, a firm tasked with managing Musk’s personal wealth and investments. In addition, Birchall serves in leadership capacities across Musk’s ventures, including acting as director of the philanthropic Musk Foundation and as chief executive of Neuralink, the company pursuing the development of brain–computer interface technology. Zilis, by contrast, has worn multiple hats across Musk’s organizations. A former director at OpenAI, she now serves as director of operations at Neuralink. Her personal ties to Musk are also well known: in February she publicly disclosed, via a post on X, that she and Musk had welcomed another son together, adding to the twins born four years earlier and another daughter born more recently. These complex personal and professional intersections render her involvement in the litigation particularly noteworthy.
The current skirmish over whether Zilis and Birchall must provide further documentation is only one battle within the far broader legal conflict between Musk and Altman. This lawsuit, filed by Musk against his former partner and OpenAI co‑founder in 2023, alleges a fundamental betrayal of OpenAI’s founding mission. Musk contends that he poured approximately $40 million into nurturing OpenAI as a nonprofit research laboratory dedicated solely to altruistic and humanitarian objectives, only to discover that the organization was later refashioned into a profit‑generating enterprise in partnership with Microsoft. According to Musk, this amounted to an “unlawful conversion” of charitable resources into commercial assets, conducted under the guise of what he has labeled a “self‑dealing, unregulated merger.” A jury trial on certain claims is scheduled for late March in Oakland, barring either a settlement or a pivotal ruling that could alter the case’s trajectory.
Altman, however, has vigorously rejected this interpretation, asserting that Musk himself once attempted to engineer a restructuring of OpenAI into a for‑profit entity. Crucially, Altman emphasizes that Musk’s proposal, advanced in 2017, would have placed control squarely in his hands by awarding him a large equity stake. Altman’s legal team argues that Zilis, because of her intermediary role between Musk and other OpenAI co‑founders, may hold communications that shed light on those private discussions. Her text exchanges, which the defense has sought since April, could reveal details about how OpenAI navigated its governance challenges, including the controversial 2019 establishment of a for‑profit subsidiary in partnership with Microsoft. In this regard, the emails and messages now in dispute may serve as pivotal evidence that reframes Musk’s claims of betrayal as selective representations of events in which he himself once played a driving role.
Musk’s attorneys, for their part, have countered that demands for additional production and preliminary depositions are unnecessary and unduly burdensome. They argue that an enormous volume of documents has already been turned over, including records from three separate professional email accounts associated with Birchall as well as multiple accounts and text message archives belonging to Zilis. On this basis, they contend that requiring two rounds of depositions for each witness would constitute disproportionate overreach. Instead, should any delays occur in producing the remaining communications, Musk’s legal team suggests that the logical remedy would simply be to postpone the currently scheduled depositions, rather than ordering duplicative testimony sessions.
Thus, the tug‑of‑war over access to Zilis’s and Birchall’s digital records exemplifies the broader strategic maneuvering that characterizes Musk’s sprawling legal battle against Altman. Both sides are seeking to establish control of the narrative well in advance of trial, leveraging subpoenas, discovery disputes, and evidentiary motions as procedural weapons. The outcome of Judge Hinton’s imminent decision regarding these key witnesses will not only determine how quickly the discovery process moves forward but may also significantly shape the evidentiary foundation upon which the March trial will be fought.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-depose-elon-musk-shivon-zilis-2025-9
