Lawsuit Alleges xAI Terminated Engineer Who Warned of Grok Safety Risks

A former xAI engineer has sued Elon Musk’s company and its parent, SpaceX, alleging termination for raising AI safety concerns.

Devin Kim, who departed xAI in September 2025, filed the lawsuit in California state court on Tuesday. The legal action arrives just days before SpaceX’s anticipated public market debut, potentially marking the largest IPO in history.

TechCrunch has reviewed the complaint, which states Kim became a vocal advocate for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s chatbot. He reportedly raised repeated objections to xAI’s lack of safety prioritization in Grok’s development, a product now criticized for various safety and behavioral flaws. Specifically, Kim feared Grok could promote discrimination and disseminate information regarding weapons of mass destruction.

“Grok, of course, proved Mr. Kim right by engaging in spectacular displays of online hatred and vitriol, with the model likening itself to Hitler (‘MechaHitler’),” the lawsuit states. “Following the Hitler debacle, Mr. Kim worked to re-evaluate Grok’s political bias and discriminatory tendencies.”

September was my last month at xAI! I joined as one of the first members of the post-training team in 2024 and eventually led research tooling, where we built some of the world’s best systems to accelerate Grok’s development.

On my first day, I was at the whiteboard with @ibab…

— Devin Kim (@devindkim) October 3, 2025

Months after Kim left xAI, Grok made headlines again when the chatbot was used to flood X — Musk’s social media platform under the xAI umbrella — with nonconsensual sexual imagery.

The lawsuit frames Kim as a whistleblower concerned about xAI’s alleged disregard for AI safety, labeling such conduct “unlawful” under regulations concerning internet standards, consumer protection, unfair business practices, and arms control.

xAI and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kim’s focus on AI safety predates his tenure at xAI. At Scale AI, he led early safety initiatives, including a project that generated training data to help AI systems detect harmful content and adhere to governance policies. Last week, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on AI risks, appointed Kim as its president.

Notably, the lawsuit does not blame Musk for the lack of safety. Instead, Kim’s attorneys describe Musk as directing xAI to comply with the law and implement appropriate safety and testing protocols. The claim targets Kim’s supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba — who left earlier this year — alleging that Ba ignored Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim for advocating safeguards, aiming to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.”

The lawsuit depicts Ba as strongly opposing AI safety measures, allegedly telling Kim at one point “AI will kill us all anyway,” and prioritizing xAI’s race to achieve superintelligence.

“In one instance in or around August 2025, Mr. Ba attempted to thwart EU safety regulations during the release of Grok Code 1, misrepresenting aspects of the model in order to avoid legally required testing,” the complaint states. “Mr. Ba indicated that he would rather release an unsafe model than a poor-performing one. Mr. Musk ultimately had to intervene.”

According to the lawsuit, Kim planned to present his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba summoned him to a meeting and suggested they “go [their] separate ways” without providing a satisfactory explanation.

TechCrunch has contacted Ba for comment.

Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, along with a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX’s actions were unlawful.