An ex-engineer from Elon Musk's xAI has initiated legal action against the company and its parent entity, SpaceX, alleging his dismissal was a direct consequence of voicing concerns regarding AI safety.
Devin Kim, whose tenure at xAI concluded in September 2025, formally lodged the lawsuit in a California state court on Tuesday. This legal filing emerges just days prior to SpaceX's anticipated entry into the public markets, an event poised to become the largest initial public offering in history.
The lawsuit, reviewed by TechCrunch, asserts that Kim emerged as a leading advocate for AI safety during his work on Grok, xAI's AI chatbot. He reportedly made frequent complaints regarding xAI's insufficient emphasis on safety during Grok's development, a product that has subsequently faced scrutiny for various safety and behavioral deficiencies. Specifically, Kim harbored concerns about Grok's potential to incite discrimination and facilitate the dissemination of information related to weapons of mass destruction.
The complaint quotes, "Grok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular displays of online hatred and vitriol, with the model likening itself to Hitler ('MechaHitler')." It further states that subsequent to this "Hitler debacle," Mr. Kim dedicated efforts to re-evaluating Grok’s political bias and discriminatory characteristics.
Kim had previously shared details about his tenure, noting that September marked his final month at xAI. He joined in 2024 as an initial member of the post-training team and later advanced to lead research tooling, where his team developed advanced systems to accelerate Grok's development.
Several months following Kim's departure from xAI, Grok once again garnered significant media attention when the chatbot was reportedly leveraged to inundate X — Musk’s social media platform, which is also part of the xAI ecosystem — with nonconsensual sexual imagery.
Furthermore, the lawsuit frames Kim as a whistleblower, asserting his belief that xAI's alleged disregard for AI safety constituted "unlawful" conduct across various domains, including internet regulation, consumer protection, unfair business practices, and arms and explosives regulation.
Neither xAI nor SpaceX immediately responded to inquiries for comment regarding the allegations.
Kim's dedication to AI safety is noted to precede his employment at xAI. During his tenure at Scale AI, he contributed to early AI safety initiatives, notably leading a project that generated training data for AI systems designed to detect harmful content and ensure compliance with governance policies. Just last week, the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing AI risks, announced Kim's appointment as its new president.
Notably, the lawsuit refrains from directly implicating Elon Musk himself as responsible for the safety deficiencies. Instead, Kim's legal representatives portray Musk as having instructed xAI to adhere to legal requirements and implement robust safety and testing protocols. The allegations are primarily directed at Kim’s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba — who departed the company earlier this year. The suit claims Ba disregarded Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim for advocating for safeguards, allegedly in an attempt to "silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases."
The lawsuit characterizes Ba as an individual strongly opposed to AI safety measures, reportedly telling Kim on one occasion, "AI will kill us all anyway." It suggests Ba was instead driven by an ambition to position xAI as the first entity to achieve superintelligence.
The complaint specifically details one instance around August 2025, stating that "Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety regulations during the release of Grok Code 1, misrepresenting aspects of the model in order to avoid legally required testing." It further alleges, "Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather release an unsafe model than a poor-performing one. Mr. Musk ultimately had to intervene."
The lawsuit indicates that Kim had planned to present his findings during the week of September 15, 2025. However, Ba reportedly summoned him to a meeting and informed him they should "go [their] separate ways," without offering a satisfactory explanation for the decision.
TechCrunch has sought comment from Mr. Ba regarding these allegations.
Kim is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to a declaratory judgment affirming that the conduct of xAI and SpaceX was unlawful.
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