When Elon Musk decides to restructure, the shake-up tends to be fast, loud, and occasionally bewildering. His latest overhaul at xAI – the division behind the Grok artificial intelligence – has pushed that reputation even further, with a 20-year-old now leading one of the company’s most critical teams.
A wave of layoffs at xAI
In early September, Musk’s AI firm xAI reportedly dismissed more than 500 employees, a sweeping move that gutted much of its data annotation department – the very people responsible for “teaching” Grok how to understand and respond to human input.
An internal email sent to staff explained the decision in typically Muskian style: direct and final. The company said it was shifting focus from generalist roles to specialised AI tutors, accelerating its efforts to make Grok more independent and efficient. “Most generalist AI tutor positions are no longer necessary,” the message read, confirming that the cuts would take effect immediately.
According to Business Insider, even senior employees found themselves abruptly locked out of internal systems, with little warning beyond that curt email.
The unexpected new leader
After the layoffs, xAI still needed someone to manage what remained of its thousand-strong data team. The new head? Diego Pasini, a 20-year-old who graduated from high school in 2023 and briefly attended the University of Pennsylvania before joining xAI earlier this year.
Pasini had first caught the company’s attention after winning a hackathon hosted by Musk’s team. Within months, he’d moved from coding challenges to managing hundreds of employees and contractors responsible for shaping Grok’s intelligence.
In his first all-hands meeting, Pasini reportedly reassured staff that no further layoffs were planned. Yet within a week, another hundred employees were gone, leaving around 900 people still on the payroll.
A meritocracy – or chaos?
Musk has long described his leadership style as “meritocratic”, arguing that talent and drive matter more than age or experience. The decision to elevate Pasini seems to fit that philosophy. As The Wall Street Journal once noted, Musk has a history of giving massive responsibility to exceptionally young engineers who “move fast and don’t overthink.”
But not everyone at xAI is thrilled. Reports suggest that two employees who questioned Pasini’s sudden promotion on internal Slack channels had their access revoked hours later. Others described a sense of panic after Pasini announced that every team member would soon undergo an individual performance review – a kind of survival test in Musk’s version of Silicon Valley Darwinism.
The bigger picture behind Grok
Behind the headlines, Musk’s ambition for Grok is clear: he wants it to compete directly with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, building an AI that can both reason and entertain. Yet credibility matters in the AI arms race – and cutting hundreds of human trainers raises questions about how Grok will continue to learn nuance, empathy and context.
Still, Musk seems unfazed. He has previously said that “extraordinary results require extraordinary people,” and he appears to believe that a handful of hungry young coders can do what entire departments once did.
It’s a gamble – but one very much in line with Musk’s playbook: fire fast, rebuild faster, and trust the chaos to produce innovation.
As one former xAI employee put it: “Working for Elon is like living in a permanent beta test. Everything’s being rewritten – including who’s in charge.”
For now, that means Grok’s future rests partly in the hands of a 20-year-old – a living symbol of Musk’s faith that genius can outweigh experience, at least until the next round of layoffs proves otherwise.
