Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI has been bleeding staff since its merger
Quick Answer
SpaceXAI, Elon Musk's rebranded xAI, has lost over 50 researchers and engineers since February, including key leaders in AI development.
Quick Take
The company faces talent drain to competitors like Meta and Thinking Machine Labs, raising concerns about its commitment to building leading AI models amid a high-pressure work culture.
Key Points
- Over 50 staff members have left SpaceXAI since February, including key leaders.
- At least 11 employees defected to Meta, and 7 to Thinking Machine Labs.
- Concerns arise over the commitment to pre-training AI models after team lead's exit.
- Musk's extreme work culture and unrealistic deadlines have contributed to staff departures.
- Employees may be motivated by potential financial gains from upcoming IPO.
📖 Reader Mode
~2 min readElon Musk’s newly rebranded SpaceXAI is reportedly losing top talent, with more than 50 researchers and engineers departing since February, according to The Information. The exits include key leaders across coding, world models, and Grok voice.
Rivals like Meta and Thinking Machine Labs are reportedly scooping up former staff, with the company’s core pre-training team dwindling to just a handful of people. Since February, at least 11 xAI employees have defected to Meta, according to The Information’s report. At least seven have left to join Mira Murati’s Thinking Machine Labs. TechCrunch has previously reported on 11 of the xAI departures announced directly after the merger, including two co-founders.
SpaceX acquired xAI — two companies owned by Musk — in February and has since installed new leadership at the company. Musk renamed the combined company SpaceXAI earlier this month.
The pre-training departures, which followed the exit of team lead Juntang Zhuang, have particularly concerned employees and people close to SpaceXAI, per The Information. Pre-training is the first step to building new AI models, and many have questioned whether the company is still committed to developing leading models.
The report also found that Musk’s culture of extreme work led some staff to leave — something Musk employees across his companies, including Tesla, have complained about. A source who spoke to The Information said Musk set unrealistic deadlines for training models, which led to cutting corners on Grok.
Of course, several of the exits could have been driven by a desire to cash out.
SpaceX regularly offers tenders so employees can sell vested shares privately. Others might simply feel confident that their equity is close to liquidity given the company’s blockbuster IPO expectations. Once employees see the financial upside light at the end of the tunnel, they’re less likely to work at a company that puts undue pressure on them and may not be building the leading models they want to work on.
TechCrunch has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
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Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch where she covers the business, policy, and emerging trends shaping artificial intelligence. Her work has also appeared in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and other publications.
You can contact or verify outreach from Rebecca by emailing rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at rebeccabellan.491 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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