xAI, Elon Musk's company, lays off hundreds of employees as expansion plans continue

xAI, the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, revealed a wave of layoffs affecting nearly 500 employees from its team working on training and developing the chatbot "Grok," according to a report published by Business Insider.

The report stated that "employees received an email on Friday evening informing them of the company's plans to reduce the number of workers specialized in training generative artificial intelligence."

The data annotation and classification team, which was the main target of these layoffs, is one of the largest and most important teams within the company, as it "takes on a vital task of teaching 'Grok' how to understand the world by putting raw data into its correct context and classifying it."

Immediately, "they were barred from accessing the company's systems after receiving the layoff notice," although the report clarified that "employees will receive their salaries until the end of their contracts or until November 30."

In a paradox that summarizes the rapid fluctuations in the technology sector, xAI simultaneously confirmed, via a post on the platform "X," that it "continues to hire across multiple sectors and even plans to increase the number of specialists in training artificial intelligence 'tenfold.'" This indicates a new strategy to restructure the workforce in favor of different skills or specialties within artificial intelligence training operations.