Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has laid off 500 workers from its data annotation team, according to internal emails obtained by Business Insider.
The messages, reportedly informed employees of an immediate “strategic pivot,” with the company deciding to “accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles.”
“As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude,” the company reportedly wrote.
The layoffs affect roughly one-third of xAI’s 1,500-member data annotation team, which has been responsible for labeling and preparing data to train the company’s chatbot, Grok.
When asked for comment, xAI did not confirm the layoffs directly but instead referred to a statement posted on X, the social network Musk acquired earlier this year. In the post, the company said it “will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x.”
“We are hiring across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and many more,” xAI added.
