Elon Musk’s newly renamed SpaceXAI has been losing talent since SpaceX bought xAI, with over 50 researchers and engineers reportedly leaving since February.
Key people from coding, world models, and Grok voice teams have left. Some of the company’s top talent has departed since the merger.
These losses come at a crucial time for Musk’s AI goals. SpaceX bought xAI in February, brought in new leaders, and Musk renamed the merged company SpaceXAI this month. The company has been in transition, with leadership changes after the merger.
Rivals are picking up former xAI staff
These departures are not just shrinking the team—they’re sending skilled AI workers to competitors.
TechCrunch says that since February, at least 11 xAI employees have joined Meta and seven have gone to Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup led by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati.
NewsBytes also reports that Meta and Thinking Machines Lab have hired former SpaceXAI employees, with the same numbers: 11 to Meta and seven to Murati’s company.
This matters because AI companies are competing hard for researchers and engineers who can build advanced models.
Losing staff in areas like coding, world models, and voice could slow SpaceXAI’s progress, especially as rivals work to improve coding assistants, multimodal agents, and AI tools for consumers.
Pre-training team raises internal concern
Pre-training, an early and important stage in building large AI models, is getting a lot of attention. After team lead Juntang Zhuang left, more people from the pre-training team also departed. This has made employees and others close to SpaceXAI worry about the company’s commitment to developing top models.
The core pre-training team is now just a few people, raising questions about the company’s model-building plans.
This concern is real. Pre-training is where companies lay the groundwork for new AI systems before refining or adapting them into products. If SpaceXAI’s pre-training team gets smaller, the company may struggle to keep up with competitors who are already releasing new models and tools for developers.
Work culture and equity may both be factors
There seem to be several reasons for the departures. Musk’s “extreme work” culture caused some staff to leave, with one source saying Musk set unrealistic deadlines for model training, which led to shortcuts on Grok. Musk’s demanding work culture has been blamed for some people leaving.
Another possible reason: some employees may be leaving because they see a chance to get liquidity. SpaceX often lets employees sell their vested shares privately, and hopes for a future IPO could make it easier for staff to cash out instead of staying under pressure.
A merger under pressure
Losing staff does not mean SpaceXAI is giving up on advanced AI. Musk still leads one of the world’s most resource-rich tech ecosystems, with rockets, satellites, data centers, and AI models. But the recent departures show that having money and computing power is not enough. In AI, skilled people who can train and launch models are just as important.
Now, SpaceXAI’s challenge is to show that the merger brings more than just a new name. The company needs to prove it can keep the talent required to compete.
