Who is Shivon Zilis?
Shivon Zilis is a tech executive and venture capitalist from Canada. She was born on February 8, 1986, in Markham, Ontario, to a Punjabi Indian mother and a Canadian father.
Zilis completed her secondary education at Markham’s Unionville High School and then went on to attend Yale University. In 2008, she received her degrees in economics and philosophy from Yale. While on Yale’s ice hockey team, she achieved the title of the school’s top scorer with the lowest average goals-against.
Career
After graduating from Yale, Zilis started her job at IBM in New York. She focused on financial technologies in new markets, especially Peru and Indonesia.
Between 2012 and 2018, she played a key role in the establishment of Bloomberg Beta as an investor and partner, backed by Bloomberg L.P. and focused on harnessing “machine intelligence”.
From 2017 to 2019, Zilis held the position of project director for Tesla, Inc.’s Autopilot and chip design division.
Shivon Zilis held the position of director for operations and special projects at Neuralink. She first crossed paths with Elon Musk during her involvement with the non-profit organization OpenAI, where she served as a board member until 2023.
In September 2023, Zilis became a member of the board at Shield AI, a defense technology company. This followed her involvement in drafting the company’s term sheet for a seed round back in 2016 during her time at Bloomberg Beta.
Zilis made headlines in 2015 for being featured on both the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capitalists and LinkedIn’s 35 Under 35 list.
Personal Life
According to court papers filed in Travis County, Texas, it was disclosed that Shivon Zilis and Elon Musk welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, in November 2021. The twins were the result of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Based on legal records, Musk and Zilis used the same Austin address to officially name their twins. In June 2024, it was revealed that Musk and Zilis had a third child together. Then, on February 28, 2025, Zilis shared the news of their fourth child’s birth, a son who was conceived through IVF with Musk.
