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Elon Musk gives xAI staff 48 hours to justify their work amid layoffs
Musk told employees on Tuesday afternoon to deliver a one-page report by noon on Thursday.
Musk told employees on Tuesday afternoon to deliver a one-page report by noon on Thursday.
Elon Musk has set a fresh deadline for staff at his artificial intelligence venture xAI, instructing them to submit detailed summaries of their recent work and future plans within 48 hours.
According to an email obtained by CNN, Musk told employees on Tuesday afternoon to deliver a one-page report by noon on Thursday. Each summary must outline accomplishments from the past four weeks and set out goals for the coming month. The directive comes just ahead of a scheduled three-hour all-hands meeting on Wednesday, underscoring the heightened scrutiny facing staff at the company.
“Send a one-page summary of what you’ve accomplished in the past four weeks and what you intend to accomplish in the next four weeks. This is due by noon on Thursday,” Musk wrote in the message.
The move is the latest example of Musk’s hands-on approach to monitoring productivity across his businesses. In August 2024, he demanded staff at X (formerly Twitter) submit monthly and yearly contribution summaries to determine stock and option allocations.
During his short-lived stint as an adviser to the Department of Government Efficiencies, federal employees received mass emails requiring weekly reports of achievements, with Musk warning that failure to respond would be treated as resignation. The programme was eventually scrapped after security concerns were raised by government agencies.
When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, he controversially asked developers to print out their code for review, only to later instruct them to destroy the physical copies.
The latest demand for reports comes during a turbulent period for xAI. Business Insider reported last week that the company had cut more than 500 roles from its data annotation team, which is responsible for training Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. The team’s work includes response evaluation and content labelling to improve Grok’s reliability.
Although leaders reassured employees during a Monday all-hands meeting that the cuts were complete, further terminations reportedly followed just hours later.
At the same time, the company has announced plans to recruit specialised AI tutors across areas such as STEM, finance, medicine, and even “memes and headline commentary”. Pay rates for these roles are set to rise significantly, from $35–65 per hour to $45–100 per hour.
With Musk demanding rapid performance reporting against the backdrop of large-scale layoffs and shifting hiring priorities, employees at xAI now face growing uncertainty over both their workloads and their job security.
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