Elon Musk‘s xAI laid off no less than 500 staff on its data annotation team on Friday night time.
The corporate despatched out emails notifying staff that it was planning to downsize its workforce of generalist AI tutors, based on a number of messages considered by Enterprise Insider.
“After a radical overview of our Human Knowledge efforts, we have determined to speed up the enlargement and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, whereas scaling again our deal with common AI tutor roles. This strategic pivot will take impact instantly,” the e-mail learn. “As a part of this shift in focus, we now not want most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.”
Employees had been instructed that they might be paid via both the top of their contract or November 30, however their entry to firm programs could be terminated the day of the layoff discover.
The data annotation team is xAI’s largest workforce. The employees play a key function in growing Grok by instructing the chatbot easy methods to perceive the world by contextualizing and categorizing uncooked knowledge.
The principle Slack room utilized by knowledge annotators had greater than 1,500 members on Friday afternoon; screenshots considered by Enterprise Insider Friday night confirmed that quantity right down to somewhat over 1,000, with that quantity persevering with to say no over the course of reporting this story.
On Friday night time, xAI posted on X that it was hiring for roles and plans to develop its workforce of specialist AI tutors by “10X.”
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Specialist AI tutors at xAI are including big worth. We’ll instantly surge our Specialist AI tutor workforce by 10x!
We’re hiring throughout domains like STEM, finance, drugs, security, and lots of extra. Come be a part of us to assist construct truth-seeking AGI!https://t.co/htpc2RijLG
— xAI (@xai) September 13, 2025
The layoff notices had been despatched out only some days after a number of senior-level staff, together with the workforce’s former head, not too long ago had their Slack accounts deactivated, Business Insider reported earlier this week.
Within the days that adopted, staff had been pulled into one-on-ones to overview their obligations, initiatives, and achievements, 9 staff instructed Enterprise Insider. They had been requested if there have been any coworkers they wished to focus on for his or her exhausting work, the employees mentioned.
XAI instructed staff on Thursday night time to arrange for a reorganization of the info annotation workforce.
In a team-wide announcement on Thursday night time, the corporate requested some staff to drop every part and deal with a sequence of assessments to find out their roles on the firm going ahead, asking workers to finish them by Friday morning West Coast time. The assessments could be used to kind annotators and their supervisors primarily based on their strengths and pursuits, based on a screenshot considered by Enterprise Insider.
The discover for tutors to arrange for testing was posted by Diego Pasini, who ten staff mentioned not too long ago turned the workforce’s chief. Pasini requested staff to take no less than one check by the next morning. The assessments lined conventional domains like STEM, coding, finance, and drugs, in addition to quirkier specialties like Grok’s “personality and model behavior” and “shitposters and doomscrollers.”
The corporate additionally listed assessments for staff aiming to enhance the chatbot’s security, together with by “pink teaming” the bot, in addition to assessments devoted to audio and video content material.
Pasini joined xAI in January, based on his LinkedIn profile. He’s “on go away” from his undergraduate research on the Wharton Faculty of Enterprise on the College of Pennsylvania, his LinkedIn exhibits.
Pasini and a consultant for xAI didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The announcement mentioned the assessments had been geared toward supervisors and generalist tutors. XAI divides its groups between STEM, coding, finance, authorized, and media specialties, in addition to a big pool of generalist tutors who’re tasked with a variety of assignments, from annotating video and audio to writing.
Two staff mentioned the STEM and coding assessments occurred on CodeSignal, a expertise evaluation platform, whereas different assessments had been hosted on Google Types.
Greater than 200 staff responded to Pasini’s message with a inexperienced check-mark emoji, and over 100 replied to the submit with questions and feedback, based on a screenshot considered by Enterprise Insider.
One employee expressed frustration with the quick time span that was given for the assessments, based on a screenshot considered by Enterprise Insider.
“Doing this after folks have gone house for the day is fairly shady,” the employee wrote. The employee’s Slack account was deactivated shortly after, a number of staff mentioned.
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