xAI hiring reset: Elon Musk apologises to AI talent overlooked during early hiring, promises overhaul

Elon Musk on Friday apologised for xAI's past hiring misses and announced a review of interview records to re-engage overlooked candidates, signalling a talent-focused reset amid the company's foundational rebuild.

In a post on X, Musk said, “Many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview xAI. My apologies.”

“Baris Akis and I are going through the company interview history and reaching back out to promising candidates,” he said, tagging his tech company's HR head.

This latest post comes after Musk's prior statement likening xAI's overhaul to Tesla's early iterations, highlighting a pattern of bold restarts to drive innovation in AI development.

He was responding to the post of Jason Ginsberg, ex-Cursor AI cofounder, ex-Skiff, who announced he was joining SpaceX and xAI.

A social media called it a “fractional Cursor acquisition,” xAI hiring top talent from the AI coding tool. To which Musk replied that xAI wasn't built right initially, so it's being rebuilt from the foundations up—just like Tesla was early on.

“xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up. Same thing happened with Tesla,” Musk said.

“I'm so glad you are willing to start from the beginning rather than a patch here and a patch there. At least you don't let ego get in the way of what's right. Thank you,” a user said.

Another added, “This is a great move. Some of the best hires come from candidates who were overlooked the first time.”

“Ok. This I like to hear. I must admit that I felt that I got a bit screwed for my efforts... (friggin Cosmo). I hope the 3rd time is a charm, Gents,” said another user.

The billionaire had earlier announced Macrohard last year as an effort to replicate the work done by Microsoft entirely via AI.

However, this time, Musk said that Macrohard is now a joint project between xAI and Tesla. The new project comes shortly after Tesla agreed to invest around $2 billion in xAI.

Musk says that the new project will run on the ‘super low cost Tesla AI4’ chip. The billionaire noted that Grok AI will act as a ‘sophisticated version of turn-by-turn navigation software’ alongside Tesla's Digital Optimus system, which will process real-time computer screen video and keyboard/mouse actions.