Just a few weeks after using his company SpaceX to acquire his AI company xAI, Elon Musk admitted that the latter “was not built right.” That’s exactly what people want to hear while you’re pitching possibly the largest initial public offering ever.
On X (another company he owns), Musk said that he was in the process of rebuilding xAI, the company responsible for Grok, “from the foundations up.” The thing is, there’s not much of the foundation left at this point—and it’s not because Musk has been cleaning shop. Just 10 of 12 people who originally founded the company alongside Musk still remain, and it lost multiple founders in the last month alone following the merger with SpaceX. So it’s less that Musk has stripped the place back down to the studs and more that he walked into the boardroom one day and found it empty.
Regardless, the CEO says the company is building back up, and it’s taking a second look at people it previously passed over. “Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview at xAI. My apologies,” Musk wrote, before stating that he is “going through the company interview history and reaching back out to promising candidates.” Whether that’s truly a recognition of having the wrong hiring processes or a tacit admission that you’ve burned through your first choices and are now pleading with the backup options is up for interpretation.
Either way, xAI will have to work on its talent retention with this new crop of hires, because the company has a real habit of burning through people. Developer Benjamin De Kraker recently recounted his experience at the company, which he was initially excited about joining but said he left feeling “sad.”
Per De Kraker’s account, Musk’s bluster about xAI having a “flat structure” where anyone can contribute was little more than a marketing pitch. Inside the company, he claimed to have been stifled by “middle managers and busybodies.” He also said that after soliciting people on X for ideas on how Grok could be improved, he was told to delete the post, and his account on X was suspended. (Interesting that the punishment would reach across whatever boundaries may exist between Musk-run entities.)
De Kraker also went out of his way to respond to a post asking if the way xAI was run ultimately led to founders quitting. “It was not random,” he replied.
Given Musk’s managerial style and his need to put his finger on the scale with Grok to make sure it’s not “woke,” it doesn’t seem like the working environment is going to improve at xAI, no matter who he brings in, as long as he’s still in charge. But hey, at least he can just keep moving money around between his companies to keep it afloat.
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