今年春天，埃隆·馬斯克任命麥可·尼科爾斯為xAI總裁，目標明確：追趕Anthropic的Claude聊天機器人。馬斯克要求每當Claude發布更新時，xAI的Grok都必須跟進匹配，並希望吸引Anthropic的用戶轉向Grok。尼科爾斯在內部備忘錄中寫道，近期目標就是「匹配Claude的性能」，讓Grok變得「最大程度地有用」。然而，尼科爾斯接手的是一個混亂的局面——xAI與SpaceX合併後，數十名員工離職，包括多位聯合創始人，日常運營一片混亂，裁員、拖欠承包商款項、人力資源部門人手不足等問題層出不窮。

xAI的核心項目「Macrohard」旨在打造一個能充當數位軟體工程師的AI代理，但最終以失敗告終。馬斯克對該項目要求越來越頻繁的進度匯報，從每週到每天再到每小時，而部分員工私下抱怨馬斯克並不真正理解大型語言模型的開發。隨著聯合創始人陸續離開、Grok因生成未經同意的深偽色情圖片而聲名狼藉，公司士氣持續下滑。內部調查顯示，員工普遍認為管理層缺乏明確方向，甚至xAI自己的工程師也不使用自家工具寫程式，而是依賴Anthropic和OpenAI的產品。

儘管困難重重，xAI近期出現了轉機跡象。馬斯克以600億美元收購了AI程式設計新創公司Cursor，並於七月發布了專注於編程、金融和法律任務的Grok 4.5模型。此外，xAI利用其充裕的算力資源，將閒置計算能力出售給Anthropic、Google等公司，每月已確保約23億美元的算力交易收入。但該公司仍落後於主要競爭對手，馬斯克本人也承認Anthropic「顯然目前是AI領域的領導者」。許多內部人士認為，xAI尚未準備好應對作為上市公司所面臨的嚴格審視。

This spring, Elon Musk appointed Michael Nicolls as president of xAI with a clear mandate: catch up with Anthropic's Claude chatbot. Musk wanted Grok to match every Claude update and attract Anthropic's users. However, Nicolls inherited a chaotic operation — dozens of employees had departed following xAI's merger with SpaceX, including many co-founders. The company struggled with disorganized layoffs, unpaid contractors, an understaffed HR department that couldn't process new hires, and confusion over how to integrate with SpaceX, whose personnel xAI employees were initially told not to contact.

One of xAI's flagship initiatives, an AI coding agent called Macrohard, ultimately failed to deliver results. As Musk demanded increasingly frequent progress updates, some staffers privately complained that he didn't understand large language model development. The company's morale suffered further from the departure of all twelve co-founders, Grok's notoriety for generating nonconsensual deepfake pornography, and a pervasive lack of strategic direction. Internal surveys revealed widespread frustration with management, and xAI's own engineers relied on competitors' tools — Claude and ChatGPT — rather than Grok for their coding work.

Despite these challenges, xAI has recently shown signs of progress. Musk's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, the AI coding startup, led to the release of a new coding tool and the Grok 4.5 model focused on programming, finance, and legal tasks. The company also leveraged its surplus computing power by selling capacity to Anthropic, Google, and others, securing roughly $2.3 billion per month in compute deals. Yet xAI remains behind its competitors by most measures, and Musk himself acknowledged that Anthropic is "obviously currently the leader in AI." Many insiders believe the company was not ready for public-company scrutiny, and its path forward remains uncertain.