xAI offered employees $420 for tax returns to train Grok — payments never came

xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, recently launched a controversial program to improve its Grok chatbot by offering employees $420 in exchange for their completed tax returns, according to a Bloomberg report. The payment amount is a clear nod to marijuana culture, a recurring joke Musk makes. The goal was to train Grok on real tax data to improve its accuracy for tax-related queries, especially ahead of the April 15 U.S. tax deadline. However, multiple employees who volunteered say they have not received any payment, and when they followed up, they were told the manager who ran the program no longer works at xAI. The program was later expanded to friends and family members who used an accountant, asking them to submit tax documents along with supporting documentation. xAI also promised participants early access to X Money, a payments platform Musk has been developing for the X ecosystem.

This incident underscores the broader struggles xAI faces in catching up with dominant AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini. Grok remains niche and controversial, and Musk has resorted to pushing it aggressively on X and leveraging government ties. Meanwhile, OpenAI is already testing a personal finance feature in ChatGPT Pro that securely connects financial accounts to analyze spending and plan budgets — a direct competitor to Grok's intended tax-assistance play. Musk's history of playing catch-up is well documented: in 2023 he called for a six-month AI development moratorium while secretly founding xAI. Now, with xAI folded into SpaceX and an IPO on the horizon, he's doubling down — but the $420 fiasco highlights the gap between ambition and execution.