WHOA.
xAI laid off 500 workers on Friday night…roughly a third of its entire data annotation team.
This was their largest internal group. At its peak, over 1,500 people were in the Slack channel dedicated to data labeling, training, and QA work.
By Friday night, that number dropped by hundreds.
Layoff notices were sent via email. Access was revoked the same day. Affected workers were told they would be paid through November 30, but they were out immediately.
This wasn’t a performance issue.
And here’s what no one’s showing you:
Where the top xAI talent tend to land next.
I’ve got the workforce data. And I’ve got the flow map below.