Earlier this year, while under oath, Elon Musk referred to Shivon Zilis—a venture capitalist who, at the time, was his live-in girlfriend and mother to four of his children—as his “chief of staff” and “close advisor” rather than, you know, something like a loving partner. Consider it foreshadowing, as Zilis announced via X (the platform that Musk owns, as you might know) that she and the CEO of SpaceX were no longer romantically involved.
The tangled web that Zilis and Musk have woven is a bit difficult to untangle, if only because the two have been semi-secretive about their arrangement. The two seem to have met when Zilis joined OpenAI in 2016, and she eventually jumped ship to serve as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, another Musk-owned company. She didn’t announce a departure from that role, so it seems she’ll continue to serve as a Musk employee.
That fact is somehow now the saddest part of the whole situation, as Zilis’ entire post amounts to a compendium of extremely piteous details if you read even a centimeter under the surface.
You can start with the fact that Zilis announced that breakup by quote-tweeting a post from BigTechAlert, an automated service that shows when major accounts in the tech space have followed or unfollowed one another, which showed Musk had unfollowed Zilis on X.
Then take a look at how Zilis describes the breakup, stating that she had been “let go” like she was laid off from a job—which is fitting since, by her own description, it happened without warning, as corporations are wont to do when they furlough staff. (Though, again, it seems she’ll keep the job where she does actual labor under Musk rather than the role that required a lot of emotional labor.)
The vast majority of the post is about what she gave to Musk in their relationship: “I feel happy that I got to show Elon how it feels to be deeply understood, nurtured, and peacefully loved with stability and gentleness,” she wrote, stating that she served as a “place of safety, sense of calm, and love” for the billionaire. There is very little time spent on what Musk gave to her.
Even the text that she chose to include as evidence of their love—and, presumably, the final messages the two of them shared—comes off as pretty one-sided. The two exchange expressions of love, but the biggest romantic gesture that Musk musters is saying that he would have invited her to a dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping if he knew that was an option. So even the sign of affection she shares is a thing he didn’t actually do.
It’s not clear what the structure of Musk and Zilis’ arrangement was, exactly, or how exclusive the two ever were. But it certainly seemed more serious than most of his flings, which make him appear very love-bomb-y (though his form of love bombing seems to typically include getting them pregnant and sending them significant sums of money for the rest of their lives unless they piss him off).
Regardless, Musk will probably be on the prowl for a new person to bear his children and handle the bulk of the work raising them.
As for Zilis, no tears spilled for the millionaire mom who will seemingly continue to draw a high-level tech exec salary, but hopefully a little distance makes her realize that she can expect more from her partner. And maybe, if she comes to her senses, she’ll spill some more of those texts like Musk’s ex-lover Ashley St. Clair did. There are probably enough stories in that iMessage chain for a sequel to the Musk documentary.
