Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI has made waves by cutting roughly 500 employees, about a third of its data annotation workforce, the largest division responsible for training its AI models.
American influencer Amanda Goodall, better known online as “JobChick,” reacted to the news on X, highlighting the unusual manner in which the cuts were carried out. She wrote, “Thursday night (last night), workers were told to drop everything and do the tests.”
Reports suggest xAI is pivoting from generalist staff to hiring domain specialists in fields such as STEM, coding, finance, law, and media. The company is also eyeing unconventional roles like Grok “personality and behavior” experts, and, unexpectedly, even “shitposters and doomscrollers.” Commenting on the unusual list, Goodall remarked: “Yes, seriously…. that is what’s being reported as some of the quirky categories.”
The way the layoffs were handled has also come under fire. According to Goodall, staff were told on Thursday night to halt their regular tasks and take tests. By the next evening, around 500 workers found their Slack accounts disabled, received termination emails, and were informed they’d be paid until Nov. 30 even though their access to company systems was cut off right away.
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Concerns have also been raised about leadership in the restructured teams. Goodall pointed out that the new team lead, Diego Pasini, is an undergraduate on leave from Wharton, leading some employees to question the experience, process, and transparency involved.
On X, she further questioned the broader implications of this method: “Will this become the new ‘sort & cull’ approach for cutting teams and conducting layoffs? 24-hour notice that starts with a test?”
The layoffs arrive amid a period of instability at xAI. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that CFO Mike Liberatore resigned after just a few months on the job, fueling further questions about the overall stability of Musk’s AI venture.
On the other hand, veteran Tesla engineer Giorgio Balestrieri, who had been with the company for eight years, resigned, pointing to Musk’s leadership as his main reason for leaving. He claimed that Musk had undermined both Tesla’s mission and democratic institutions in multiple countries.
“All this being said, I do need to address the elephant in the room: the main reason I’m leaving is that I think Elon has dealt huge damage to Tesla’s mission (and to the health of democratic institutions in several countries),” wrote Balestrieri in a LinkedIn post.
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“Beyond that, Elon’s leadership and decision making seem seriously compromised. Given his huge (and growing, inexplicably) stake in Tesla, I can’t convince myself anymore that this is the right place to be.”
“This is not just about politics: it’s about lying to the public, manipulating public discourse, targeting minorities and supporting climate change deniers and political forces aligned with the oil and gas industry. I think it’s fairly indisputable that the current U.S. administration is slowing down the energy transition. Unfortunately, speed is critical if we are to avert the worst consequences of climate change,” he added.
Balestrieri, who joined Tesla in 2017, was responsible for leading the company’s European energy trading algorithms, with a focus on the Autobidder platform used for energy storage and trading.
The Autobidder platform enables energy storage systems to trade in real time, making Balestrieri’s departure particularly significant as Tesla’s focus expands beyond electric vehicles into energy software. He also raised political concerns, suggesting that Musk may be aligning with forces opposed to the global energy transition.