Elon Musk’s newly rebranded SpaceXAI has reportedly lost top talent since February, with the departure of more than 50 researchers and engineers. According to information. Speakers include key leaders in coding, world models and Grok audio.
Competitors such as Meta and Thinking Machines Lab are reportedly recruiting ex-employees, leaving the company’s pre-primary team down to just a handful of people. According to a report by The Information, at least 11 xAI employees have switched to Meta since February. There are at least seven people left to join Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab. TechCrunch reported this earlier 11 of XAI departures announced directly after the merger, incl two co-founders.
SpaceX has acquired xAI — two companies owned by Musk — in February and since then have installed new leadership at the company. Musk renamed the combined company SpaceXAI earlier this month.
The pre-exercise walkouts that followed team leader Juntang Zhuang’s speech have particularly worried employees and people close to SpaceXAI. Pre-training is the first step in building new AI models, and many question whether the company is still committed to developing advanced models.
The report also found that Musk’s extreme work culture has caused some employees to quit — something Musk’s employees at his companies, including Tesla, have complained about. A source who spoke to The Information said that Musk set unrealistic deadlines for training the models, which led to Grok cutting corners.
Of course, some of the exits could be due to the desire to withdraw cash.
SpaceX regularly offers tenders so that employees can sell their own shares. Others may be confident that their capital is close to liquid, given the company’s blockbuster IPO expectations. When employees see the financial light at the end of the tunnel, they are less likely to work for a company that puts undue pressure on them and may not produce the lead models they want to work for.
TechCrunch has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
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