Who is Shivon Zilis?
Shivon Zilis is a Canadian technology executive and venture capitalist focused on artificial intelligence. She has invested in early AI start-ups, worked on Tesla’s Autopilot programme and served as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink.
Early life and education
Zilis was born in Markham, Ontario, in 1986. She studied economics and philosophy at Yale University, graduating in 2008. At Yale she was the goalkeeper for the women’s ice hockey team and became the school’s all-time leader in goals-against average.
Career highlights
- IBM: started her career in New York working on financial technology in developing countries such as Peru and Indonesia.
- Bloomberg Beta (2012–2018): one of the founding investors and a partner, backing companies in what she called “machine intelligence”.
- Tesla (2017–2019): project director for the Autopilot and chip design team.
- Neuralink: director of operations and special projects at the brain–computer interface company.
Major achievements
She became known for mapping the AI start-up landscape in the 2010s, when few investors focused on the field. She wrote the seed term sheet for defence technology company Shield AI in 2016 and later joined its board.
Expertise
Her expertise sits at the meeting point of AI research, start-up investing and hardware engineering.
Boards and influence
Zilis served on the board of the non-profit OpenAI until 2023 and joined the board of Shield AI in September 2023. Her time on the OpenAI board was later discussed in legal disputes involving the company.
Recognition
She was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in venture capital in 2015 and to LinkedIn’s 35 Under 35.
Personal life
Zilis has children with Elon Musk, which brought her significant public attention.
Early AI investing
At Bloomberg Beta, Zilis became known for publishing a widely shared map of the “machine intelligence” start-up landscape, which helped investors and founders understand a fast-growing field years before generative AI became mainstream. She invested in and advised start-ups using machine learning across industries, from defence to enterprise software.
Timeline: key moments
- 1986Born in Markham, Ontario
- 2008Graduates from Yale
- 2012Joins Bloomberg Beta as a founding investor
- 2015Named to Forbes 30 Under 30
- 2016Writes Shield AI’s seed term sheet
- 2017Joins Tesla Autopilot team
- 2023Leaves OpenAI board; joins Shield AI board
Shivon Zilis built a career at the frontier of AI, from early-stage investing to hardware and brain–computer interfaces.
