Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has yet to pay employees promised $420 each for submitting tax returns to train its Grok chatbot.
xAI has not distributed $420 payments to employees who provided their tax returns to train the Grok AI model, despite promises made two months ago. The incentive was offered to improve Grok’s capabilities ahead of the U.S. tax deadline, aiming to compete with rivals like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Employees and their families were told they would receive the payment after uploading completed tax filings from 2024 or 2025. The deal also included early access to X Money, a payments platform under development. Internal communications indicated the effort was time-sensitive to capitalize on tax season demand.
No official explanation has been provided for the delay, and the payments remain outstanding. The situation follows broader scrutiny of Grok’s training data and guardrails.