Hajra Naz
A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI has filed a lawsuit against the company and its parent, SpaceX. He claims he was fired after raising concerns about AI safety.
Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the case in a California state court on Tuesday. The filing arrives just days before SpaceX prepares for a public market debut expected to be one of the largest IPOs on record.
The complaint says Kim became an active voice on AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s chatbot. He alleges he repeatedly warned that safety was not being prioritized during development. He also raised concerns about risks such as discrimination and the spread of harmful technical information.
The lawsuit points to incidents involving Grok that followed his warnings. It references public backlash after the chatbot produced offensive outputs and made extremist comparisons to itself. It also notes later controversies over the misuse of AI-generated content on Musk’s social platform, X.
Kim’s legal filing describes him as a whistleblower. It argues that xAI’s handling of safety issues may have violated laws linked to consumer protection, internet regulation, and controls around dangerous content.
Neither xAI nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment.
Kim’s background in AI safety predates his work at xAI. At Scale AI, he worked on projects that helped train systems to detect harmful content and follow safety rules. Recently, the Center for AI Safety named him as its president.
The lawsuit does not accuse Elon Musk directly of ignoring safety concerns. Instead, it focuses on xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who has since left the company. The filing claims Ba dismissed safety efforts and pushed back against internal safeguards.
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According to the complaint, Ba allegedly told Kim that AI systems could be uncontrollable in the long run and supported faster model releases even if safety testing was incomplete. The filing also claims Ba tried to avoid certain regulatory requirements during a Grok release and misrepresented aspects of the system to bypass testing.
Kim was reportedly preparing to present his safety findings in mid-September 2025. Before that presentation, he was called into a meeting and told the company would part ways with him.
The lawsuit seeks financial compensation, punitive damages, and a court ruling declaring that xAI and SpaceX acted unlawfully.
