The top power players at Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain tech startup

In 2016, Musk launched Neuralink with help from seven scientists and one engineer. Only two remain of the founding group—Musk and Neuralink President Dongjin “DJ” Seo. The goal of Neuralink is to develop brain-machine interfaces to help people with paralysis. In January, Musk said a third person had received a Neuralink implant and the company has plans for about 20 to 30 more implants in 2025, according to comments at a Las Vegas event that were reported by Bloomberg. Neuralink has raised $686.2 million in funding and was reportedly valued at $8 billion in July 2024 based on secondary market trades. All this is taking place as Musk is running five other firms, including Tesla, and the government DOGE project. How does he keep up?

The answer is he relies on the help of people like Shivon Zilis, who previously worked at Tesla, and was a director at OpenAI, which Musk cofounded but no longer owns and is trying to reacquire. Musk and Zilis are close—so close that he has fathered her four children. (Musk Tweeted in 2022 that he was, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.”) Zilis has spent nearly eight years at Neuralink, where she’s director of operations and special projects. Jared Birchall, a Musk fixer, is listed as CFO, amongst other titles, of Neuralink, according to documents.

Like many Musk companies, Neuralink is not very forthcoming with information and did not respond to messages for comment. Coins2Day relied on news reports, government documents and filings, as well as social media posts including LinkedIn and X, to compile its list of executives. We attempted to contact everyone. Scroll past the chart to see a list of power players at Musk’s other companies and at DOGE.

This story has been updated from a version that was originally published in November 2023.

Coins2Day Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 8–9 to convene the smartest people we know—technologists, entrepreneurs, Coins2Day Global 500 executives, investors, policymakers, and the brilliant minds in between—to explore and interrogate the most pressing questions about AI at another pivotal moment. Register here.