Elon Musk’s xAI lays off 500 workers tasked with training Grok. What layoff email said

Elon Musk’s xAI laid off 500 workers from its data annotation team on Friday night.

Published on: Sep 14, 2025, 08:41:15 IST

By Sanya Jain

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Elon Musk’s xAI laid off 500 workers from its data annotation team on Friday night. The data annotation team was tasked with training xAI’s generative AI chatbot, Grok.

Elon Musk's xAI has laid of at least 500 AI tutors (via REUTERS)

According to a Business Insider report, an email sent to affected employees on Friday night informed them that the AI company was scaling back its focus on general AI tutors, while prioritizing and expanding its focus on specialist AI tutors.

What the layoff email said

"After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we've decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles. This strategic pivot will take effect immediately," the email read. "As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude."

Workers were told that their access to the company systems would be cut off immediately. However, they would receive their salary till either the end of their contract or November 30.

Specialist AI tutors

xAI, while scaling down its general AI tutors team, is simultaneously increasing its focus on specialist AI tutors.

A post by xAI on September 13 said it would increase its specialist AI team by 10 times. “Specialist AI tutors at xAI are adding huge value. We will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x!” the post said.

On the company’s website, openings include Specialist AI tutors for fields like video games, web design, data science, medicine, STEM and more.

Last week, Business Insider had also reported how many senior xAI employees of the data annotation team had their Slack accounts deactivated.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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