10 quotes about xAI and Elon Musk from the engineer who is out days after giving a sweeping podcast interview

• An xAI engineer spilled for over an hour about Elon Musk's AI company on the "Relentless" podcast.
• Sulaiman Ghori, the technical staffer, has since left xAI.
• From data centers to office sleeping pods, here are the most interesting quotes.

Sulaiman Ghori gave a sweeping interview about his work at xAI. Four days later, he is no longer working at the company.

The interview on the "Relentless" podcast covered dozens of topics, from the internal company culture and work schedule to the eyebrow-raising way Elon Musk's AI company builds its data centers.

Elon Musk's companies are famously wary of the press and media. And while it's not clear whether Ghori's exit is related to the podcast interview — neither xAI nor Musk commented on the former employee's quotes or departure when contacted by Business Insider — some big names like MrBeast are speculating as much. Ghori hasn't commented publicly about the circumstances of his departure and did not respond when contacted by Business Insider.

So what exactly did the now-former xAI employee talk about?

Read on for 10 of the most interesting things Ghori said on the podcast.

1. XAI's data centers are built on temporary 'carnival' leases, Ghori said

How is xAI building its data centers so quickly? Through temporary licenses, Ghori said.

"It was the fastest way to get the permitting through and actually start building things," Ghori said. "I assume that it will be permanent at some point."

Ghori said that the temporary leases were an exception granted by the local government, one made for carnivals. The host, Ti Morse, laughed: "So xAI is actually just a carnival company?"

"It's a carnival company," Ghori responded.

2. XAI is full of 'very good' AI employees — but that can lead to org chart confusion

AI visionaries often talk about a world where managers run a team of agents, not employees. They seem to be there already at xAI.

The company is rebuilding its core production APIs, Ghori said. The team leading it is one person and 20 agents. "They're very good, and they're capable of doing it," he said.

At another point in the podcast, Ghori described the confusion that AI employees can cause.

"Multiple times I've gotten a ping saying: 'Hey, this guy on the org chart reports to you. Is he not in today or something?'" he said. "It's an AI. It's a virtual employee."

XAI teams are kept small, even without AI employees. The iOS team had three employees at the time of the Grok Imagine launch, Ghori said. He was the third.

3. Each 'commit' to the xAI code base is worth around $2.5 million

How valuable is each commit to xAI's repository? They did the math, Ghori said: It's $2.5 million.

"I did five today," Ghori said. His work for the day would be valued at $12.5 million.

4. 'When we pick up new products from Nvidia or whoever, not everything works'

One of Elon Musk's key roles at xAI is as a fixer.

Ghori said that, when the company picks up new products from the likes of Nvidia, not everything works. That's when Musk gets on the phone, Ghori said.

"We would work side-by-side until that was resolved," Ghori said. "Otherwise it would have taken weeks of back-and-forth."

5. Musk's Cybertruck incentive

The xAI CEO made an unusual offer when xAI's engineers were setting up new GPU racks.

"Elon's like, 'OK, you can get a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 24 hours,'" Ghori said.

The engineer — whom Ghori only referred to by their first name, Tyler — won the bet. Now, Ghori said he sees Tyler's Cybertruck outside his lunch window.

6. Nobody told him what to do while onboarding, Ghori said

The teams within xAI are limited and blurry, Ghori said.

That made onboarding a challenge, he added, as nobody told him what to do.

"My first day, they just gave me a laptop and a badge," Ghori said, adding that he wasn't assigned a desk.

Ghori sought out cofounder Greg Yang, who had been instrumental in his hiring. He soon started working on the Ask Grok feature in X.

7. Sleeping pods, bunk beds, and tents.

Elon Musk's companies have a long history of overnighting at the office. Former Twitter director Esther Crawford generated headlines when she posted a "cheeky" photo of herself sleeping at the company's headquarters.

XAI seems to have embraced this reputation. The company has sleeping pods and bunk beds, Ghori said.

"When the tent picture came out, everyone kept sending it to me," Ghori said. "We have tents, but I've never seen that many out at once."

Who responds when Musk spots a late-night problem with X? "Whoever is awake," he said.

8. XAI's big 'human emulator' bet

Ghori worked on the Macrohard team — a tongue-in-cheek play on the opposite of Microsoft — that is developing "human emulators."

The xAI engineer explained the concept in reference to Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot. Just as Optimus performs physical human actions, these emulators will perform digital human actions.

The emulators will do anything that a human needs to look at a screen, use a keyboard and mouse, and make decisions, Ghori said.

9. Dormant Teslas could power the human emulators

XAI wants to roll out the human emulators slowly, then all at once, Ghori said. The goal is to scale to one million emulators.

There are 4 million Tesla cars in North America alone, Ghori said. They're sitting idle for 70-80% of the time, he said. Why not pay owners to lease time off their cars and run the emulator on them?

"That's something without any build-out requirement," Ghori said.

This isn't the first time using dormant Teslas to power new ambitions has been mentioned. Elon Musk said at Tesla's November shareholder meeting that the vehicles could offer a "massive distributed AI inference fleet."

10. XAI's new models are planned out far in advance

Consumers can currently use the Grok 4 model, which xAI released in July.

XAI is working far ahead, Ghori said. He joined in March 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile. Grok-5 was planned even before he joined, Ghori said.

The model was "planned out and designed" far in advance, he said.