Elon Musk is asking SpaceX employees to think of themselves as more than rocket-builders—he wants them to be “parents” of the company’s AI. During a recent SpaceX all-hands meeting, the world’s richest-man said the company plans to train its GrokAI on the “sum total” of SpaceX’s information, including the work and contributions of its employees.
The meeting—shared by SpaceX on X—was posted on Tuesday morning. Musk told workers they would “effectively be the parents of the AI,” because Grok would inherit their “thoughts and ideas and beliefs.” Musk presented the arrangement, arguing that SpaceX’s workforce includes some of the world’s strongest engineers and that their collective knowledge could help shape a more capable AI system.
The precise categories of employee information that will be used have not been publicly detailed. Reports describing Musk’s comments say the plan involves SpaceX’s internal data and employee contributions, but SpaceX has not publicly provided a comprehensive explanation of what information will be included or how employees’ data will be handled.
The SpaceX CEO described the workers as contributors to the GrokAI’s identity. He explained the resulting model from the training will inherit something from the employees that produced it.
“So in a way, it will be trained on you,” Musk said.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This isn’t the first time big tech tried tracking employees to train AI models. In April, Meta rolled out a program known as the Model Capability Initiative that captured employee mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes and screenshots to generate data for training its AI models. The goal was to teach AI agents how people navigate computers and perform workplace tasks.
According to Meta, the information was not to be used for employee performance reviews and safeguards were in place. The response within Meta was anything but enthusiastic, however. About 1,600 employees eventually signed a petition opposing the tracking program amid concerns on privacy.
But Musk appears more optimistic. According to the video, he said AI revenue could surpass revenue from all of SpaceX’s other businesses as soon as September, and projected that 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity could generate between $300 billion and $500 billion in annual revenue.
SpaceX currently has about 1.4 gigawatts of AI computing capacity and is targeting 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027. Musk also used the meeting to highlight the scale of Starlink. He said the satellite internet service is now available in 167 countries with about 22 million mobile users.
SpaceX went public in June selling 555.56 million shares, raising roughly $75 billion. SpaceX’s IPO documents explicitly stated proceeds would be used to fund its growth strategy, including the expansion of AI computing infrastructure. In its first earnings report as a public company, SpaceX reported stronger-than-expected revenue.
The first earnings call illustrated how the aspirational CEO viewed his team at SpaceX. Musk had already made clear that he viewed AI infrastructure as an easy problem for the company’s engineers. When discussing SpaceX’s plans to build data centers, he compared the challenge as the “New York Yankees going in and playing a Little League team.”