Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI has been bleeding staff since its merger

Elon Musk’s newly renamed SpaceXAI is reportedly losing top talent, with the departure of more than 50 researchers and engineers since February. according to The Information. The outputs include key leaders in coding, world models, and Grok voice.

Rivals like Meta and Thinking Machines Lab are reportedly bringing in former staff, while the company’s core training team is down to just a handful of people. According to The Information’s report, at least 11 xAI employees have defected to Meta since February. There are at least seven left to join Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab. TechCrunch previously reported on 11 of the xAI departures announced immediately after the merger, including two co-founders.

SpaceX acquired xAI – two companies owned by Musk – in February and has since installed new leadership at the company. Musk renamed the combined company SpaceXAI earlier this month.

The pre-training departure, which followed the departure of team leader Juntang Zhuang, particularly concerns employees and people close to SpaceXAI, The Information said. Pre-training is the first step to building new AI models, and many have wondered whether the company is still committed to developing industry-leading models.

The report also found that Musk’s culture of extreme work has led to some staff leaving – something Musk employees at his companies, including Tesla, have complained about. A source who spoke to The Information said Musk set unrealistic deadlines for training models, leading to cuts to Grok.

Of course, several exits may have been caused by the desire to cash out.

SpaceX regularly offers tenders so that employees can sell acquired shares privately. Others can simply be confident that their equity is close to liquidity given the expectations of the company’s successful IPO. Once employees see the financial light at the end of the tunnel, they are less likely to join a company that puts unnecessary pressure on them and may not build the leading models they want to work on.

TechCrunch has reached out to SpaceX for comment.