A former Elon Musk xAI engineer has filed a lawsuit against the company and its parent SpaceX alleging he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety.
Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the lawsuit in California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is ready to join public markets in what is shaping up to be the largest IPO in history.
According to the lawsuitAs TechCrunch has seen, Kim became a leading voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. He allegedly repeatedly complained that xAI did not prioritize security in the development of Grok, a product that has since been criticized for a variety of security and behavioral issues. In particular, Kim was concerned about the possibility that Grok could encourage discrimination and help spread information about weapons of mass destruction.
“Grok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular online displays of hate and vitriol, in which the model compared himself to Hitler (‘MechaHitler‘),” the lawsuit reads. “Following the Hitler debacle, Mr. Kim worked to reassess Grok’s political bias and discriminatory tendencies.”
A few months after Kim left xAI, Grok made the news again when the chatbot was used to flood X, Musk’s social media platform that also falls under the xAI umbrella, with non-consensual sexual images.
The lawsuit also positions Kim as a whistleblower concerned about xAI’s alleged disregard for AI safety as “unlawful” in areas such as Internet regulation, consumer protection and unfair trade practices, and the regulation of weapons and explosives, among others.
xAI and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kim’s focus on AI safety predates his time at xAI. While at Scale AI, Kim worked on early AI security initiatives, such as leading a project that produced training data for AI to train systems to detect harmful content and comply with governance policies. Last week, the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization that focuses on AI risks, called kim as its president.
Interestingly, the lawsuit does not implicate Musk himself as a reason for the lack of security. Rather, Kim’s lawyers describe that Musk ordered xAI to follow the law and implement proper testing and security processes. Instead, the claim is directed at Kim’s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who left the company earlier this year – saying Ba ignored Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim for pushing for safeguards to be put in place, in an effort to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and bias.”
The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who vehemently opposed AI safety measures, allegedly telling Kim at one point, “AI will kill us all anyway,” and who was instead driven by the mission to make xAI the first to achieve superintelligence.
“In one case in or around August 2025, Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety standards during the release of Grok Code 1 by misrepresenting aspects of the model to avoid legally required testing,” the complaint says. “Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather launch an unsafe model than an underperforming one. In the end, Mr. Musk had to intervene.”
According to the lawsuit, Kim intended to make a presentation of his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba called him into a meeting and told him they should “go their separate ways” without giving him a satisfactory reason.
TechCrunch has contacted Ba for comment.
Kim seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX’s conduct was unlawful.
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