xAI cuts 500 jobs as focus turns to specialist AI tutors
Employees affected by xAI’s layoffs will continue to receive salaries until contract expiry or November, even though their access was revoked immediately.
Elon Musk’s company xAI has laid off around 500 staff from its data annotation team after deciding to reduce its focus on general AI tutors. The employees were told their system access would be revoked immediately, although salaries will be paid until contracts end or until 30 November.
According to reports, the company will instead invest more heavily in specialist AI tutors for areas such as video games, web design, data science, medicine, and STEM.
xAI announced plans to expand the specialist team tenfold, describing the roles as highly valuable to developing its technology.
The shift comes as xAI continues to promote its chatbot Grok. Musk recently highlighted its predictive abilities, sharing benchmarks that measure performance in forecasting politics, economics, sports, and cultural events.
Observers see the move toward specialist tutors as a way to refine Grok’s training and strengthen its commercial applications.
The layoffs follow earlier signs of restructuring, with some senior staff reportedly losing access to internal systems before the formal announcement.
Analysts suggest the changes reflect a strategic recalibration, aiming to boost productivity instead of spreading resources too thinly across generalist roles.
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