Billionaire Elon Musk has pushed back against criticism that his AI startup, xAI, is struggling to keep staff.

The discussion kicked off on Saturday when a user named Varunram Ganesh posted on X. He shared a screenshot of an employee announcing they were leaving xAI after six months. Ganesh claimed xAI’s attrition rate over the past year appears to be at least 50%.

Attrition is simply the share of employees who leave a company over a set period, whether they quit, are laid off, or are let go.

Another user added to the criticism by posting old screenshots of Musk’s hiring advice and saying Musk used to be one of the best recruiters in tech, but that xAI’s hiring and retention have been worse than his earlier projects.

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Musk replied that xAI has had “very few regretted departures.” He also said the company is moving faster than any other AI group, even though it has a smaller team. “We are accelerating faster than any other AI organization on Earth, despite being a much smaller team,” he wrote.

The retention debate comes as xAI reportedly spends close to $1 billion per month to expand its AI capabilities. Reports say it spent more than $7.8 billion in the first nine months of last year, while generating about $107 million in revenue. The company also reportedly recorded a $1.46 billion loss in the September quarter.

There have also been notable exits. Reports say xAI laid off more than 500 workers from its data annotation team last year as it reshaped the group and shifted toward more specialized tutors for its Grok model. Another high-profile departure was CFO Mike Liberatore, who left after about three months in the role.

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