Discussion

• @guodzh Guodong Zhang on x

  Last day at xAI. Wild journey past three years but excited about next chapter. Thanks all for the love and support yesterday. So many friends made along the way and I will miss you all!

• @imhaotian Haotian Liu on x

  I left xAI earlier this week. It was a difficult decision. The past two years have been an intense, fun, and deeply rewarding journey, and I accomplished things I could not have imagined two years ago. Thank you @elonmusk for the opportunity and for everything I learned at xAI.

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview @xAI. My apologies. @BarisAkis and I are going through the company interview history and reaching back out to promising candidates.

• @buccocapital @buccocapital on x

  Are there people left to cut? Is it just Nikita now?

• @dannydailynote @dannydailynote on x

  @Cointelegraph xAI is fighting for talent with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. In this market, culture + stability matter. Every layoff sends a signal to top researchers: maybe not the safest place to build long-term. Short-term cost cuts... but possibly hurting the talen…

• @himanshustwts Himanshu on x

  This resignation might be truly frustrating for xAI. Zhang was: - an xAI cofounder (only two left now) - leading Grok Code + Grok Imagine - reporting directly to Elon - one of the core ML researchers behind Grok BIG! [image]

• @shaneguml Shane Gu on x

  End of xAI truly

• @marandefi DefiMaran on x

  @sivil_taram I saw more than four people leave xAI this morning

• @sivil_taram Qian Liu on x

  goodbye, my captains 👋

• @karlbode.com Karl Bode on bluesky

  I am dedicated to living long enough to watch his entire empire collapse

• @davelee.me Dave Lee on bluesky

  Gotta wonder if much of SpaceX's success comes from the fact its talent had very few alternative companies to work for [embedded post]

• @niedermeyer.online E.W. Niedermeyer on bluesky

  looks like the actual talent is out at xAI, and Musk is “parachuting in ‘fixers’ from SpaceX and Tesla to audit the start-up”  —  all just a little bit of history repeating...  www.ft.com/content/e5fb...

• @metacurity.com Cynthia Brumfield on bluesky

  Tee hee  —  “Musk has relentlessly pushed the heavily loss-making AI start-up to catch up with rivals, but so far its Grok chatbot and coding product have failed to gain traction with paying individual users or businesses.”  [embedded post]

• r/mlscaling r on reddit

  Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

• @realjimchanos James Chanos on x

  Reminder that @SpaceX investors were diluted 20% to “buy” xAI. $TSLA

• @fredlambert Fred Lambert on x

  2018: Musk quits OpenAI, citing conflict of interest with Tesla's own AI effort. 2019: Musk claims Tesla is now an AI company 2020-2022: Tesla misses every single autonomy timeline set by Musk 2022: Musk sells billions worth of Tesla shares to acquire Twitter - reducing his

• @flintcasey Casey Flint on x

  I don't know why he tweeted this - it makes him look extremely desperate for talent. “I am lowering our bar”

• @gordonjohnson19 Gordon Johnson on x

  Hold on... what? Why wasn't this announced BEFORE @SpaceX investors recently purchased the company? $TSLA

• @ibd_ecarson Ed Carson on x

  Elon Musk basically confirming that the SpaceX deal was an xAI bailout (after xAI bailed out Twitter/X). How else could you explain xAI's $250 billion valuation in the SpaceX deal when the startup - which is bleeding cash w/o much revenue - was “not built right.”

• @hamids Hamid on x

  After telling everyone that xAI and Grok were the most advanced AI in the world, had the most advanced AI teams ever assembled, raised money at $200 Billion valuation (with little revenue, unlike its counterparts OpenAI, Anthropic and others), making fun of all of its [image]

• @chafkin Max Chafkin on x

  obviously long history of musk doing this, but also...this is a company that has already raised and burned through billions if not tens of billions of dollars and is attempting to claim a significant percentage of Musk's less troubled rocket company [image]

• @benjamindekr Benjamin De Kraker on x

  Here is an xAI story.  When I was first hired (low level) by xAI, I was extremely excited.  I greatly admired Elon and what Grok could be.  I have a pretty cool AI following here on X. Some big names see my stuff, including Elon himself (at the time).  Lex, Beff, Andreessen, Arav…

• @electricfutures @electricfutures on x

  Raises $20B, including $2B from Tesla despite shareholders objecting, values xAI at 25% of profitable space company in merger, then admits it was actually worthless and he diluted SpaceX investors by 20% to save his cash-burning CSAM machine which needs to be entirely rebuilt

• @xdnibor Robin on x

  Elon does this relatively often. And it works. Not too long ago, he fired almost the entire Supercharger team. Now it's thriving like never before. In 2018 he fired a lot of the managers and staff from the Starlink team.

• @brianroemmele Brian Roemmele on x

  This is bold leadership. It is the only way to build things right. I absolutely applaud this approach and the guts it takes do innovate.

• @basedjensen @basedjensen on x

  Look I may be biased but come on big e saying this is extremely insulting to the brilliant team who was with you. Saying it was not built right the first time says a lot about your leadership than anything else

• @benjamindekr Benjamin De Kraker on x

  Some of us tried to alert you that there were problems, chief.

• @eastlondondev Andrew Jefferson on x

  I interviewed at xAI, 3 of my 4 interviews were leet coding no AI allowed. No check whatsoever of my ability to use AI as an engineer. Compare with Replit where I've just been contracting - they're creating new kinds of interviews where candidates get access to Claude code and

• @sporadica @sporadica on x

  every single time i hear a former xAI employee speak, it's just more of the same bullshit i've also watched accounts get banned on this site for criticizing Elon and xAI so, excuse me for not believing in mein fuhrer Musk anymore. dude is a baby. get ya shit right Elon, then

• @benjamindekr Benjamin De Kraker on x

  I strongly suspect that many of the foundational problems at xAI were kept hidden from Elon until very recently. There were layers to the iceberg, and he (unfortunately) only saw the parts above water. Those of us who were further down saw the cracks but were told to shut up.

• @ethanhe_42 Ethan He on x

  Personal story: I applied to xAI in 2023 when it was founded and got rejected after an interview round. I went back to honing my skills. In 2025, xAI reached out to me, and I was fortunate to get an offer. Now, 8 months in, I can confidently say: this is the best place to do

• @ctrlaltdwayne Dwayne on x

  Imagine you're an xAI engineer. You worked 80 hour weeks for a year. You helped build Grok. And then one morning you open Twitter and your CEO has told the entire world that everything you built was wrong and needs to be redone from scratch. And he thinks this makes him look like…

• @twanzio @twanzio on bluesky

  “Not nearly racist or misogynist enough so we gotta start from scratch” [embedded post]

• @caseynewton Casey Newton on bluesky

  Prediction: it will not be built right the second time around, either [embedded post]

• @danielmconnolly @danielmconnolly on bluesky

  Narrator: It will not be built right this time either.  Please pay at the pump.  Thank you.

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  @beffjezos xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up. Same thing happened with Tesla.

• @barisakis Baris Akis on x

  Thrilled to welcome @milichab and @JasonBud to build what's possible at XAI + SpaceX The AI products that truly transforms the world and delivers abundance for humanity won't look like today's tools. It demands first-principles rethinking, grand ambition, vastly more training

• @jasonbud Jason Ginsberg on x

  I'm proud to be joining SpaceX and xAI with @milichab It has become clear that software is changing fundamentally. More and more, people can shape the tools they use directly, and the ceiling of what can be built keeps rising. What makes xAI special is the scale of its

• @mitch_troy Mitchell Troyanovsky on x

  An insane heist by xAI

• @beffjezos @beffjezos on x

  If I were not already building Extropic, I would have 100% joined @xai The lab with the most e/acc and Kardashev-pilled mission of all Definitely a huge opportunity for great talent to rise to the occasion here

• @milichab Andrew Milich on x

  I'm joining @SpaceX and @xai with @JasonBud. X is the company realizing science fiction - reusable rockets, humanoid robots, data centers in space, and more. Almost 10 years ago, I joined SpaceX as an intern on Dragon 2 crew displays. This was in the era of the first rocket [imag…

• @beffjezos @beffjezos on x

  Fractional Cursor acquisition. xAI taking the right steps

• @elonmusk Elon Musk on x

  Welcome! Orbital space centers and mass drivers on the Moon will be incredible.

• @shaunmmaguire Shaun Maguire on x

  Absolutely massive hires for @SpaceX and @xai @milichab and @JasonBud are exceptionally talented young builders I can't wait to see what they'll do with +100x resources Join them!

• @a4xrbj1 Andrea Basso on bluesky

  Zihang Dai left xAI earlier this week, according to people familiar with the matter.  His xAI badge has vanished from his X profile.  —  Meanwhile, Guodong Zhang has told people he plans to leave in the coming days, insiders said.  His X profile still has an xAI badge.  —  /1

• @a4xrbj1 Andrea Basso on bluesky

  Tesla disclosed the $2 billion xAI investment in its Q4 2025 earnings report on January 28.  Days later, SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.  Now Musk is telling the world the thing he just sold to his own public and private investors was …