Elon Musk’s newly rebranded SpaceXAI has reportedly been losing top talent, with more than 50 researchers and engineers leaving since February, according to The Information. Exits include key leaders across coding, world models, and Grok Voice.
Competitors such as Meta and Thinking Machine Labs are hiring former employees, and the company’s core pre-training team is reportedly shrinking to just a handful of people. At least 11 xAI employees have defected to Meta since February, according to a report by The Information. There are at least 7 people left to join Mira Murati’s Thinking Machine Labs. TechCrunch previously reported on 11 of the xAI departures announced shortly after the merger, including two co-founders.
SpaceX acquired xAI, two companies owned by Musk, in February and has since introduced new leadership to the company. Musk changed the name of the merged company to SpaceXAI earlier this month.
According to The Information, the pre-training departure particularly concerned staff and those close to SpaceXAI after the departure of team leader Juntang Zhuang. Pre-training is the first step in 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 extreme work culture led some employees to leave the company. This is something Musk employees across his companies, including Tesla, have complained about. A source who spoke to The Information said Musk set unrealistic deadlines for the training model, which pushed Grok into a corner.
Of course, the desire to cash out may have led to some exits.
SpaceX regularly offers bids for employees to sell their vested interests privately. Others may feel confident that their assets are close to liquid, given the company’s blockbuster IPO expectations. Once employees see a financial positive at the end of the tunnel, they may be less likely to work for a company that puts undue pressure on them and may not be able to build the leading model they want.
TechCrunch has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
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