Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has reportedly cut at least 500 jobs from its data annotation division supporting the Grok chatbot.
As reported by Business Insider, the terminated employees were informed on Friday night regarding the downsizing of its team of generalist AI tutors.
All these employees were responsible to train Grok by contextualizing and categorizing raw data, making it the largest team within the company.
As part of downsizing, the team was informed that they would receive their payments by either the end of their contract or until November 30, 2025; however, access was removed immediately after getting the termination notice.
While responding to media queries, xAI pointed to a statement on X (formerly Twitter) in which the company stated that it has multiple vacancies opened for different roles, with plans of broader expansion of its specialist AI tutor workforce by “10X.”
The development follows reports that xAI finance chief Mike Liberatore left the company in the end of July after a few months of joining the role, according to Wall Street Journal, citing some credible sources.
For those unaware, Elon Musk released xAI in 2023, has solidified its position as a major competitor to the leading industry players, criticizing them for additional censorship and weak safety practices.