SpaceX Overhauls xAI Engineering Team Ahead of Planned IPO

Elon Musk's AI company xAI undergoes major restructuring as it merges closer with SpaceX.

Apr. 8, 2026 at 10:58pm

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A highly detailed, 3D macro illustration of glowing, neon-lit AI hardware components and infrastructure, representing the technological backbone of xAI's AI models and systems. The image features recognizable physical tech elements like circuit boards, processors, and data cables illuminated by vibrant cyan and magenta lights, conceptually illustrating the company's efforts to rebuild its AI capabilities.As xAI undergoes a major engineering overhaul to keep pace with AI rivals, the company's technological infrastructure is being rebuilt from the ground up to power its ambitious plans ahead of a potential multi-trillion-dollar IPO.Palo Alto Today

As Elon Musk's xAI merges more closely with SpaceX ahead of the space giant's planned IPO, the AI company is undergoing a major overhaul to its engineering team. SpaceX executive Michael Nicholls said xAI is "clearly behind" the competition and is taking action to catch up quickly. Several key leadership changes have been made, including the appointment of Devendra Chaplot, Aman Madaan, Aditya Gupta, and others to oversee various aspects of the company's model training, product, and infrastructure efforts.

Why it matters

The stakes are high for xAI as it pushes toward an IPO that could value the company in the trillions. The reorganization is part of Musk's efforts to rebuild the company from the ground up and keep pace with AI rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The changes come amid ongoing departures and layoffs at xAI, which has lost several co-founders and senior leaders in recent months.

The details

SpaceX executive Michael Nicholls has taken on the title of xAI president as the company merges more closely with SpaceX. Devendra Chaplot will lead pre-training, Aman Madaan will oversee model factory and tooling, Aditya Gupta will head post-training and reinforcement learning, and Beibin Li and Xuhui Jia will lead video and image training. The product team will be led by Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsburg, while Jake Palmer and Daniel Dueri will oversee physical and compute infrastructure, respectively. Nicholls said the company's compute performance is "embarrassingly low" and plans to improve it significantly in the next two months.

  • In February, Musk first reorganized the company after xAI was acquired by SpaceX.
  • Since January, eight of the engineers who helped found the company alongside Elon Musk have left, including co-founders Nordeen, Zhang, Kroiss, and Pohlen.
  • In March, Musk said on X that "xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up."

The players

Michael Nicholls

The senior vice president of Starlink at SpaceX, who has taken on the title of xAI president.

Devendra Chaplot

A former researcher at Facebook and Thinking Machines Labs, who joined xAI last month and will lead pre-training.

Aman Madaan

Will oversee model factory and tooling, including the infrastructure, data pipelines, and training workflows used to develop and improve AI models.

Aditya Gupta

Will head post-training and reinforcement learning, the final stage in which the model is fine-tuned, aligned with human preferences, and optimized for real-world use cases.

Beibin Li

A former researcher at Microsoft and Meta, will lead post-training for Grok Code.

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What they’re saying

“We are clearly behind the competition and need to catch up as quickly as possible.”

— Michael Nicholls, Senior Vice President of Starlink at SpaceX

“xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up.”

— Elon Musk

What’s next

SpaceX is expected to file an initial public offering this year, which could value the company at over $2 trillion. As xAI merges more closely with SpaceX, the company's reorganization and restructuring efforts will be crucial in positioning it for a successful IPO.

The takeaway

Elon Musk's ambitious plans to take SpaceX public have led to a major overhaul of xAI, the AI company he acquired earlier this year. The reorganization of xAI's engineering team and leadership is a clear sign that Musk is determined to make the company a competitive force in the AI industry as it prepares for a potentially record-breaking IPO.