SpaceXAI has lost about 22 per cent of staff since its merger, TechCrunch reports
TechCrunch reports that SpaceXAI, the company Elon Musk created by merging his AI and aerospace ventures, has lost about 22 per cent of its workforce in the 18 months since the merger. The article's sources are described as two unnamed senior managers inside the combined company.
SpaceXAI was formed in October 2024 when SpaceX and Musk's separately operated xAI laboratory were formally placed under a single legal entity. In announcing the merger, Musk said the two sides would build "a new model for AI capability oriented towards space." Combined headcount before the merger was about 14,000.
According to the cross-checked information published by TechCrunch, departures are concentrated in three categories. The first is senior researchers from the former xAI laboratory; these individuals are described as having been unhappy with management-hierarchy changes affecting the AI research function after the merger. Several former xAI engineers have since moved to Anthropic and Google DeepMind.
The second category is senior engineers from SpaceX's well-known flight-software team. Their departures are said to be tied to ambiguity about decision-making authority between AI systems and flight-software functions. Four senior flight-software engineers resigned in the same week in December 2025.
The third category is administrative and human-resources staff. According to the TechCrunch reporting, the two companies' administrative systems were merged onto a single platform after the deal; during the transition, several long-serving employees described their roles changing and chose to leave.
A SpaceXAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that "our attrition rates are in line with industry averages, and a degree of movement among research teams is normal over an 18-month period." The company said current headcount stands at 12,300, with 1,200 new engineering hires over the past six months.
Elon Musk told investors at a session last month that the merger "is moving in the expected direction" and that the company is "the only one producing a single integrated model for autonomous flight systems in Mars orbit." Musk did not address the departures directly.
Departures are drawing varied responses in the engineering community. Senior AI engineers have clear pricing power in the market; according to compensation data service Levels.fyi, average advertised pay for the SpaceXAI senior research engineer role currently exceeds $1.1 million when stock options are included.
Engineering performance at SpaceXAI is a separate question. The company has been celebrated for the success of its Starship V3 production line and last month's record-setting fuel-tank pressure test. On the AI side, the sixth version of the company's Grok large language model is reported to be in training; the training infrastructure is built on Nvidia H200 clusters, not Cerebras.
The TechCrunch piece suggests SpaceXAI faces a 12-month period during which it will need to redefine its "organisational culture and decision-making architecture." The possibility of an IPO in early 2027 was among the scenarios mentioned in an investor participation document published last year.