Elon Musk's xAI offered its own staff $420 each. The catch was that they had to hand over their tax returns.
That was two months ago. Bloomberg now reports the money still has not shown up.
xAI is racing to make Grok useful for things people pay for. Tax help and accounting are high on the list.
Musk has been telling X users that Grok can "help with your taxes."
To get there, the firm asked staff to send in their own returns so Grok could learn from them.
The pay was $420 each. That number is on-brand for Musk, who has used it in product prices and stunts for years.
Bloomberg reports those payments have not gone out. Staff who handed over their forms months ago are still waiting on the cash.
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xAI is not in a calm patch. SpaceX bought xAI in February.
The deal valued the combined firm at about $1.25 trillion. The merged shop is now branded SpaceXAI.
It has lost more than 50 staff since the deal closed, per The Information.
At least 11 staff went to Meta. At least seven joined Mira Murati's Thinking Machine Labs.
The exits hit leaders on coding, world models, and Grok voice. Pre-training is the team that builds the actual models from scratch.
It has shrunk to a handful of people.
Some left because of culture and burnout. Some left to cash out, since SpaceX runs tender offers that let staff sell vested shares before any public listing.
On its own, a missed pay-out is small. In context, it lands different.
xAI is trying to sell Wall Street on Grok. It is also trying to keep its own staff for the IPO.
Asking workers to share private tax data and then not paying them lands wrong on both fronts.
There is a privacy issue too. Tax returns hold Social Security numbers, home addresses, and income detail.
All of that is now training data for a chatbot.
The number itself is also a tell. $420 is small money for a Wall Street IPO candidate.
It is also a number Musk has used for years as a joke. xAI did not reply to public questions about when staff will be paid.
Watch xAI's data and labor practices, not just its model scores.
A firm burning about $1 billion a month and losing senior staff does not need a story about unpaid workers.
For investors waiting on the SpaceX-xAI public listing, that mix is what matters.
The story also sets a tone. If xAI cannot pay its own staff for tax help, no Wall Street firm should hand it sensitive client data either.
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