Musk staffs xAI with Starlink loyalists ahead of a $1.25 trillion listing
A Bloomberg feature based on interviews with about a dozen people familiar with xAI reports that after SpaceX absorbed the company, dozens of employees left, including most cofounders, and Musk redeployed trusted lieutenants from Starlink and Tesla. Longtime Starlink executive Michael Nicolls became xAI president in April with a mandate to catch up with Anthropic's Claude. Per SpaceX's IPO filing, xAI posted a $2.47 billion operating loss on $818 million of revenue in Q1 2026, with AI capex of $7.7 billion in the quarter; the combined listing targets a valuation around $1.25 trillion.