xAI Engineer Departs Company Days After Viral Podcast Appearance Revealing Internal Insights
January 20, 2026
Sulaiman Khan Ghori, a Member of Technical Staff at Elon Musk's xAI, has left the company just days after appearing on a candid podcast that offered unprecedented insights into the AI startup's inner workings, culture, and ambitious projects. His departure, announced on January 19, 2026, via X (formerly Twitter), has sparked widespread speculation that the interview may have crossed confidentiality lines, though neither Ghori nor xAI has confirmed the exact reason.
Ghori's X bio now reads "MACROHARD @xAI prev," indicating the role is past tense, and he posted: "I have left xAI. Nothing but love to my former team and coworkers!" The message received thousands of likes and hundreds of replies, with many users linking it directly to his January 15 appearance on the Relentless podcast hosted by Ti Morse.
The hour-long interview, titled "WTF is happening at xAI | Sulaiman Ghori," has amassed over 70,000 views on YouTube and drawn millions on X. In it, Ghori, who joined xAI in March 2025, described a high-intensity, flat organization with minimal bureaucracy: "No one tells me ‘no.’ If I have a good idea, I can usually go and implement it that same day." He highlighted the company's engineer-centric culture—"Everyone’s an engineer"—and fuzzy team boundaries that enable rapid fixes.
Ghori detailed xAI's breakneck pace, including building the Colossus supercomputer cluster in just 122 days using temporary land leases and high utilization rates. He revealed infrastructure workarounds, such as deploying 80 mobile generators and battery packs to balance data center loads without straining municipal grids. These details, while impressive to engineers, raised eyebrows for potentially exposing vulnerabilities in power and land dependencies.
A major focus was "MacroHard," an internal project Ghori described as emulating human digital tasks—keyboard, mouse, and screen interactions—at 1.5–8x human speed. He explained plans to scale to millions of "human emulators" as virtual employees, starting with internal testing and potentially bootstrapping off Tesla's network. Ghori noted Tesla's millions of idle vehicles (80% in North America) could provide distributed compute via leased idle time, offering capital efficiency over cloud providers like AWS or Nvidia.
He also shared anecdotes about Elon Musk's hands-on style: quick resolutions to issues via direct calls, a Cybertruck bet over a 24-hour training run (which Ghori won), and "surges" in the "war room" where teams pull all-nighters. Ghori praised Musk's ability to predict bottlenecks and recalibrate timelines based on deployed hardware.
Ghori's background adds context to his enthusiasm. A Bay Area-based engineer with robotics and machine learning expertise, he founded multiple startups since 2019, including Khan Space Industries and Swiftink.io. His personal tinkering—building fidget spinners, 3D printers, and even a liquid fuel rocket engine—mirrors xAI's experimental ethos. The podcast ended with stories of childhood inventions, like a RepRap printer that caught fire and a rocket test that singed his jacket.
Online reactions have been polarized. Supporters called the interview "marketing gold" for recruiting, highlighting xAI's flat structure and high autonomy. Critics accused Ghori of breaching NDAs by sharing operational details like power setups and emulator plans. One viral post quipped: "works for xAI > goes on podcast > absolutely unhinged amount of leaks > fired." Another warned that revelations could aid competitors or adversaries targeting infrastructure.
Some speculated the departure was mutual or unrelated, noting much information aligned with public knowledge about xAI's physics-first approach. However, the timing—leaving four days after the podcast—and the bio update fueled theories of termination. No xAI employees publicly commented on his post, adding to perceptions of a tight-knit, secretive environment.
The incident echoes patterns at Musk-led companies, where transparency clashes with corporate controls. Similar scrutiny followed departures at OpenAI and Tesla. xAI, founded in 2023 to "understand the universe," has grown rapidly, launching Grok models and Colossus while competing with OpenAI and Anthropic.
Ghori has not detailed future plans, though his bio mentions Emergent Ventures and "Conqueror of the Seven Seas" (likely humorous). The podcast continues to drive discussions, underscoring public fascination with xAI's "insane" speed and Musk's leadership.
As AI races intensify, such leaks highlight tensions between innovation's openness and the need for secrecy. Whether Ghori's exit proves a cautionary tale or a launchpad for his next venture remains to be seen.