xAI's founder exodus reportedly tied to safety concerns and frustration over Grok's failure to catch up

xAI has lost half of its founders in recent weeks and months. Elon Musk said on X that some departures were part of a restructuring where "unfortunately we had to part with some people" to "improve speed of execution."

But former employees tell a different story. One ex-employee told The Verge that many people at the company had grown disillusioned with Grok's focus on NSFW content and its lack of safety standards. A second former employee backed that up: "There is zero safety whatsoever in the company." According to the source, Musk deliberately pushed to make the model less restricted, viewing safety measures as censorship. Among other things, Grok had generated sexualized images of children.

You survive by shutting up and doing what Elon wants.

Ad

Another common complaint is that xAI is "stuck in the catch-up phase" without shipping anything fundamentally new compared to OpenAI or Anthropic, even though they're all trying to do the same thing anyway. Several people who left are now using money from the SpaceX merger to start their own companies, including AI infrastructure startup Nuraline.