Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has laid off about one-third of its data annotation team — roughly 500 workers — as the company reorients its approach to training its chatbot, Grok.
The cuts, which began late Friday, were announced in emails to employees describing an immediate “strategic pivot” away from generalist roles.
“After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we’ve decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles,” the company wrote in the message obtained by Business Insider, which first reported the news. “As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.”
The layoffs hit the company’s largest team, whose annotators have played a central role in teaching Grok how to interpret and categorize raw data. The main Slack channel for annotators, which had about 1,500 members Friday afternoon, dropped by hundreds that evening, according to the report.
In a statement on X, the platform also owned by Musk, xAI said it plans to “surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x.” The company added: “We are hiring across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and many more. Come join us to help build truth-seeking AGI!”
The reorganization followed a week of internal skills tests meant to assess employees’ strengths and determine potential new roles. Workers were asked to complete assessments in areas including coding, finance, safety and internet culture.