Quick overview

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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is attempting to persuade companies to use its Grok chatbot to expedite the coding process. However, Musk’s own staff members have occasionally been hesitant to follow suit.

Some SpaceX engineers have been reluctant to use Grok for technical work because it isn’t as efficient as competing tools. According to some of the people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal issues, some employees in its xAI division have been using  Anthropic PBC’s Claude for coding instead of Grok.

AI coding tools, which make writing and debugging code easier, are now a major source of income for xAI’s rivals.

The reluctance of Musk’s employees to use Grok suggests that the company has a long way to go before becoming a major player in the market. These difficulties have forced Musk to create what might be one of his best.

Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, which merged with xAI earlier this year, announced on Tuesday that it has an agreement allowing it to either pay $10 billion for the companies’ collaboration or acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year.

The expensive partnership aims to create “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.” Meanwhile, xAI has created a sophisticated, if frequently contentious, chatbot using information from the social network X, which Musk owns. However, Grok has not yet demonstrated its coding prowess, and there is a great chance that this will soon change.

Before SpaceX’s anticipated June IPO, the company’s employees have been asked to demonstrate that they can significantly increase revenue, which, up until mid-2025, came mostly from Musk’s other ventures. Meanwhile, the xAI team has been promoting Grok as a helpful tool for conducting internal business and providing performance reviews to Wall Street behemoths and US government agencies.