Building the next frontier of AI takes brainpower, and right now Elon Musk's AI company is leaking it. SpaceXAI, the new name for xAI after SpaceX acquired it in February, has watched more than 50 researchers walk out the door since the deal closed.
The exits are hitting the team that builds models from scratch.
The Information reported the exits, which run across the company's coding group, world models team, and the Grok voice product. The pre-training crew, the engineers who build new AI models from scratch, has been hit especially hard after lead Juntang Zhuang walked.
Meta has picked up at least 11 of the departing employees, while another 7 went to Mira Murati's new Thinking Machines Lab.
TechCrunch had already reported 11 exits right after the merger in February, including two xAI co-founders. That's a lot of brainpower running out the door right when the company is trying to ship its next set of models.
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There are two big drivers. One is money - SpaceX runs regular tenders that let employees cash out vested shares, and a blockbuster IPO is widely expected.
For many staff, the financial light at the end of the tunnel is bright enough to make the long hours less worth it.
The other is the hours themselves. A source told The Information that Musk's training timelines were tight enough that corners got cut on Grok, the kind of culture employees have flagged at Tesla and his other companies before.
The takeaway: When equity is close to cashable and pressure is at a peak, top researchers can pick their next stop.
Pre-training isn't a side project - it's the team that builds every new model. If that team keeps shrinking, so does the case that SpaceXAI is still chasing the frontier.
Meta and Thinking Machines are betting they can build it instead.
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