xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, recently reduced its data annotation workforce by at least 500 employees. This action, impacting the team responsible for refining data used to train the Grok AI model, occurred on the evening of September 12, 2024.
Business Insider reported that affected employees, working as general AI tutors, were notified via email. The notification stated that while they would receive their salaries through the end of their contracts on November 30, their access to xAI systems was immediately terminated. The data annotation team plays a critical role in categorizing and contextualizing raw data, enabling Grok to better comprehend and interact with the world.
Following inquiries from Reuters, xAI addressed the layoffs by referencing a post on the social media platform X. The post announced an immediate expansion of its “Specialist AI tutor team by 10x,” with recruitment efforts focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.
Specialist AI tutors at xAI are adding huge value. We will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x!
We are hiring across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and many more. Come join us to help build truth-seeking AGI!https://t.co/htpc2RijLG
— xAI (@xai) September 13, 2025
The announcement detailed that these specialist tutors would contribute to enhancing xAI’s AI technologies through high-quality inputs, labels, and annotations, utilizing specialized software. Additionally, their work would encompass gathering data in various formats, including text, audio recordings, and video sessions, to refine training data.
These changes at xAI follow the departure of key personnel, including Chief Financial Officer Mike Liberatore, sometime before September 2024. In July 2024, xAI launched Grok 4, promoted as the “smartest AI in the world.” During the unveiling, Elon Musk stated Grok 4’s capabilities included achieving near-perfect scores on standardized tests like the SAT and GRE, answering novel questions, and potentially inventing new technology before the end of 2024, or certainly by the following year.
