Overview

• Employees were notified Friday night that most generalist AI tutor roles were eliminated, with pay continuing through contract end or November 30 but system access cut the same day.
• xAI posted that it will expand its specialist AI tutor corps by 10x and is recruiting across areas including STEM, finance, medicine and safety.
• Days before the layoffs, at least nine senior annotators’ Slack accounts were deactivated and staff were called into one-on-ones to review their work.
• Workers were instructed to complete short-notice skills tests to be sorted into specialty tracks, a process communicated by team lead Diego Pasini.
• The data annotation group is xAI’s largest team and central to training Grok, and the shake-up follows recent leadership turnover reported elsewhere, including the CFO’s departure.