xAI Talent Drain Hits 50+ as Researchers Flock to Meta
More than 50 researchers and engineers have left xAI since SpaceX acquired the AI startup in February. The departures include layoffs, firings, and voluntary exits. All 11 of xAI’s original co-founders have now left the company. Most of the departures involve staff who worked on Grok, xAI’s large language model family.
How the SpaceX Acquisition Reshaped xAI
SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock transaction on February 2, 2026. The deal valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. That put the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. Elon Musk has since announced that xAI will stop existing as a standalone company. It now operates as an AI division of SpaceX, under the name SpaceXAI.
The restructuring moved fast. In early March, team leaders working on coding, world models, and Grok voice all left. A culture of extreme overwork was a factor, the Information noted. The researcher count at xAI has fallen from roughly 200 in late 2025.
The xAI Talent Drain Is Feeding Direct Competitors
Meta and Thinking Machines Lab are leading the recruitment of former xAI staff. Meta has hired at least 11 researchers from xAI since February. Thinking Machines has taken in at least seven over the same period. Anthropic, maker of Claude, hired at least two former xAI employees this year. Several other alumni have joined frontier AI labs or launched their own startups. The talent flowing out carries more than headcount consequences. Former staff bring technical judgment, unfinished ideas, and a clear picture of what did not work at Grok.
What SpaceXAI Is Relying on Now
SpaceXAI’s clearest near-term revenue path looks like infrastructure, as Startup Fortune reported. In May, Anthropic agreed to use compute at Colossus 1, SpaceXAI’s Memphis data centre. The arrangement covers roughly 300 megawatts of capacity. That arrangement makes a direct rival a paying customer, which raises a fair question about where SpaceXAI’s model lab currently stands. On April 21, Musk struck a deal with Anysphere, the company behind Cursor. The agreement gives SpaceXAI the option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Alternatively, SpaceX can pay $10 billion for their joint work together. The company is also targeting a mid-2026 IPO. Reports put the valuation in the $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion range.
