Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI has been bleeding staff since its merger

The pre-training departures, which followed the exit of team lead Juntang Zhuang, have particularly concerned employees and people close to SpaceXAI, per The Information. Pre-training is the first step to building new AI models, and many have questioned whether the company is still committed to developing leading models. 

The report also found that Musk’s culture of extreme work led some staff to leave — something Musk employees across his companies, including Tesla, have complained about. A source who spoke to The Information said Musk set unrealistic deadlines for training models, which led to cutting corners on Grok. 

Of course, several of the exits could have been driven by a desire to cash out.

SpaceX regularly offers tenders so employees can sell vested shares privately. Others might simply feel confident that their equity is close to liquidity given the company’s blockbuster IPO expectations. Once employees see the financial light at the end of the tunnel, they’re less likely to work at a company that puts undue pressure on them and may not be building the leading models they want to work on.

TechCrunch has reached out to SpaceX for comment.