xAI has fired an engineer who raised alarms about Grok’s safety, a new lawsuit claims

A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI company has filed a lawsuit against the company and its parent company SpaceX, claiming he was fired for raising concerns about the safety of artificial intelligence.

Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the lawsuit in California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to hit the public markets in what will become the largest initial public offering in history.

According to the lawsuit, seen by TechCrunch, Kim became a prominent voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s chatbot. He allegedly repeatedly complained about xAI’s failure to prioritize safety in developing Grok, a product that has since come under fire for a range of safety and behavior issues. In particular, Kim was concerned that Grok might incite discrimination and help spread information about weapons of mass destruction.

“Grock, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in astonishing displays of hate and vitriol online, with the model likening herself to Hitler (“MechaHitler”),” the lawsuit said. “After the Hitler debacle, Mr. Kim worked to reevaluate Grok’s political bias and discriminatory tendencies.”

A few months after Kim left xAI, Grok made headlines 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 labels Kim as a whistleblower who was concerned about XAI’s alleged disregard for AI safety as “unlawful” in areas such as internet regulation, consumer protection, unfair trade practices, and weapons and explosives regulation, 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 safety-related AI initiatives, such as leading a project that generated AI training data to train systems to detect malicious content and comply with governance policies. Last week, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on AI risks, named Kim as its president.

Interestingly, the lawsuit does not implicate Musk himself as the cause of the insecurity. Instead, Kim’s lawyers describe Musk as directing XAI to follow the law and implement appropriate safety and testing processes. Instead, the claim targets 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, in an attempt to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.”

The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who staunchly opposed AI safety measures, allegedly told Kim at one point “AI is going to kill us all anyway,” and who was instead motivated by the mission of making AI the first to reach superintelligence.

“In one instance in or around August 2025, Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety regulations during the Grok Code 1 release, misrepresenting aspects of the model in order to avoid legally required testing,” the complaint says. “Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather launch an unsafe model than launch an underperforming model. Mr. Musk eventually had to step in.”

According to the lawsuit, Kim intended to give a presentation of his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba summoned him to a meeting and told him they should “go away.” [their] Separate ways” without providing a convincing reason.

TechCrunch has reached out to Ba for comment.

Kim is seeking punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX’s conduct was unlawful.