xAI owes employees $420 each for providing their tax returns to train Grok — 2 months later, no one has been paid and morale is tanking

Friends and family of xAI employees were also encouraged to volunteer (and promised the payment) as long as they had used an accountant, not AI, to prepare their taxes.

What xAI offered and where it now stands

In addition to the one-time $420 payment (yes, that’s another marijuana reference (3) from Elon Musk), employees were also told they would get early access to X Money, the long-awaited payments platform being built into X, Bloomberg reported.

To meet the requirements for the incentive, volunteers had to upload their completed tax filings as well as any supporting documents and materials either from the 2025 or 2024 tax years, according to internal chats viewed by Bloomberg.

And this is not the first time that Musk has asked employees to provide crucial training data for Grok.

In late 2025, employees were asked to provide their work data (via screen recording) for a software project known as Macrohard. The goal was to use AI agents to “replicate an entire company.” At the time, those who participated were promised a 20% bonus. The payments did eventually come but it took a while, according to people familiar with the matter Bloomberg reported.

The interesting twist in this latest case is that some xAI employees have asked where the payment is and were told the manager responsible is no longer working there.

This is the latest blow in an already challenging year for employee morale.

Researchers continue to leave the company due to burnout and Musk’s “extremely hardcore” work demands (as well as better work opportunities elsewhere). Additionally, the xAI and SpaceX merger led to a management overhaul, with a post-merger audit of xAI leading to a dismissal of several employees whose work was deemed inadequate. More co-founders of xAI were pushed out due to coding division underperformance, leaving only two of the original 12 co-founders intact, Financial Times reported (4).

At the time, staff were frustrated and felt all the change was harming employee morale — now there’s another reason to be frustrated.

Should you share personal information with AI?

This latest story asks whether anyone, employee or otherwise, should share personal information like income, amount of taxes paid, SSN and a range of other confidential details with an AI chatbot.

A recent study from Stanford (5) highlights that there are privacy risks in doing so because AI companies are using your AI chatbot conversations to train their LLMs. This could include everything from your request for dinner ideas or trip itineraries to financial questions or tax advice.