Inside xAI: Engineer's Revelations on Musk's AI Company

A former xAI engineer provided an unusually detailed look into Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company during a lengthy podcast interview, revealing everything from the company's unconventional data center strategy to its ambitious plans for digital human emulators. The interview, which aired on the "Relentless" podcast, offered a rare peek behind the curtain of a famously secretive organization.

Just four days after the interview was published, the engineer, Sulaiman Ghori, was no longer working at the company. While neither xAI nor Musk commented on Ghori's departure, the timing has sparked widespread speculation. The interview itself covered a wide array of topics, painting a picture of a fast-moving, intense work environment where innovation often happens at breakneck speed.

One of the most striking revelations concerned how xAI is building its data centers with such speed. According to Ghori, the company utilizes temporary licenses originally intended for carnivals. This approach allowed them to bypass lengthy permitting processes and begin construction immediately.

"It was the fastest way to get the permitting through and actually start building things," Ghori said. "I assume that it will be permanent at some point."

The host of the podcast, Ti Morse, joked about the arrangement, asking if xAI was actually a carnival company. Ghori's response was telling: "It's a carnival company." This pragmatic, unconventional approach appears to extend to the company's physical workspace as well, which includes sleeping pods, bunk beds, and tents for employees working overnight.

The company's workforce structure is equally innovative. Ghori described a team structure where human employees manage a team of AI agents. He noted that the team rebuilding xAI's core production APIs consisted of just one human and 20 agents. This can lead to organizational confusion, as Ghori explained that colleagues sometimes pinged him asking about a team member who was actually an AI.

On the product side, Ghori worked on the Macrohard team—a name that is a tongue-in-cheek play on Microsoft. This team is developing "human emulators," which are designed to perform digital human actions like using a keyboard, mouse, and making decisions on a screen. The goal is to scale this to one million emulators, potentially using a novel resource: dormant Tesla vehicles.

• 4 million Tesla cars exist in North America alone.
• These vehicles are idle 70-80% of the time.
• The plan involves leasing idle time from owners to run emulators.

As Ghori noted, this approach has "no build-out requirement," leveraging existing infrastructure for a massive distributed AI network.

Elon Musk's role at xAI extends beyond leadership; he is described as a hands-on fixer. When the company encounters issues with new hardware from suppliers like Nvidia, Musk reportedly gets on the phone to resolve them directly.

"We would work side-by-side until that was resolved," Ghori said. "Otherwise it would have taken weeks of back-and-forth."

This hands-on approach is also reflected in the company's incentive structures. Ghori recounted a story where Musk offered a Cybertruck to any engineer who could get a training run on new GPU racks operational within 24 hours. An engineer named Tyler succeeded and now parks his Cybertruck outside the office. The company's onboarding process is similarly lean; Ghori recalled his first day involved receiving a laptop and a badge, with no assigned desk, requiring him to seek out cofounder Greg Yang to begin work.

Looking ahead, xAI has a clear and ambitious product roadmap. Ghori joined the company in March 2025, and he revealed that the next major model, Grok-5, was already planned and designed before his arrival. This indicates a long-term vision that extends well beyond the currently available Grok 4 model.

The company's valuation of its work is also exceptionally high. Ghori mentioned that each "commit" to the xAI code base is valued at approximately $2.5 million. On one particular day, he made five commits, valuing his daily contribution at $12.5 million. This underscores the high-stakes, high-value nature of the work being done within the company's walls.

The interview paints a picture of xAI as a company that operates with extreme speed and unconventional methods, from its temporary data centers to its small, agile teams. The blend of human and AI employees, combined with direct involvement from Musk, creates a unique and intense work environment.

While the circumstances surrounding Sulaiman Ghori's departure remain unclear, his insights provide valuable context for understanding the company's trajectory. The focus on leveraging existing resources, like dormant Teslas, and the long-term planning for models like Grok-5 suggest a company that is thinking far outside the box to achieve its goals.