xAI has laid off over 500 employees who worked on Grok development

xAI has laid off at least 500 employees from its largest unit, the data annotation team, which classified and contextualized raw data to train its Grok artificial intelligence.

As Business Insider reports, employees were informed of the layoffs on the evening of September 12 via email, which discussed the dismissal of a group of universal AI trainers.

The laid-off workers were promised salary payments until their contracts ended on November 30, but access to the company's internal systems was suspended immediately after the notice.

In a comment to Reuters, xAI cited a post in X announcing a hiring spree for specialized AI trainers instead of generalists. The company said it plans to increase its team of specialists by 10 times and is looking for experts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics ( STEM) . New employees will be required to provide high-quality input, labeling and annotation using specialized software, as well as collect and create their own data in text, audio and video formats.

By the way, it was previously reported that xAI sued a former employee for stealing secrets related to Grok. It was also revealed in July that xAI trained Grok on the faces of its employees.