More than 50 researchers and engineers have walked out of Elon Musk’s newly rebranded SpaceXAI since February, with the core pre-training team now down to a handful of people. TechCrunch AI, citing reporting from The Information, says the departures span coding, world models, and Grok voice leadership. Rivals are circling: at least 11 ex-xAI staffers landed at Meta, and at least seven joined Mira Murati’s Thinking Machine Labs.
This matters because pre-training is where frontier models are born. When the team responsible for step one of model development empties out, it raises a fair question about whether SpaceXAI is still in the race to build leading AI.
What happened
SpaceX absorbed xAI in February (both Musk-owned), installed new leadership, and Musk renamed the combined entity SpaceXAI earlier this month. Since the merger:
- 50+ researchers and engineers have left
- The pre-training team lead, Juntang Zhuang, walked out, triggering a cascade of exits in that group
- Two co-founders departed in the wave right after the merger
- Meta picked up at least 11 former xAI staffers
- Thinking Machine Labs grabbed at least seven
TechCrunch AI had previously reported on 11 of the post-merger departures.
Why people are leaving
According to The Information’s sources, two forces are driving the exodus:
- Musk’s extreme work culture. A familiar complaint across Tesla, SpaceX, and now SpaceXAI. One source said Musk set unrealistic training deadlines that forced the team to cut corners on Grok.
- Liquidity is in sight. SpaceX runs regular tender offers letting employees sell vested shares privately, and IPO expectations are sky-high. Once staffers see the cash exit lit up, the calculus shifts. Why grind through brutal deadlines on a model program you’re not sure about when you can cash out and join a competitor building what you actually want to work on?
That second point is the quiet killer. Retention works when equity isn’t yet liquid. When it is, culture has to carry the weight, and Musk’s culture is famously a stress test.
What this means for the AI race
The Grok line has been Musk’s bid to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google at the frontier. Gutting the pre-training bench makes that harder. Meta’s been on an aggressive talent-acquisition tear all year, and Thinking Machine Labs (Murati’s stealth-ish startup) is clearly building a roster of senior researchers who’ve shipped real models. SpaceXAI is feeding both of them.
What to watch next:
- Whether SpaceXAI announces a new pre-training lead or restructures the model program
- The next Grok release cadence (delays would confirm the bench is too thin)
- Whether Musk pulls in talent from Tesla’s AI org to plug the holes
SpaceX hasn’t commented. TechCrunch says it reached out.
The bigger picture: this is the first time a Musk AI venture has visibly lost its core technical group at scale. Equity liquidity plus a hot talent market plus a punishing culture is a tough combination to survive. Full reporting at the original source.