A former engineer at Elon Musk’s xAI has filed suit against the company and its parent SpaceX, claiming he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety.
Devin Kim, who left xAI in September 2025, filed the suit in a California state court on Tuesday. The complaint comes days before SpaceX is set to join the public markets in what’s shaping up to be the largest IPO in history.
According to the lawsuit, which TechCrunch has viewed, Kim became a prominent voice for AI safety while working on Grok, xAI’s AI chatbot. He allegedly complained repeatedly about xAI’s failure to prioritize safety in Grok’s development, a product that has since come under fire for a range of safety and behavioral issues. In particular, Kim was concerned with the possibility that Grok could foment discrimination and help spread information about 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 reads. “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…
A few months after Kim departed 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 nonconsensual sexual imagery.
The lawsuit also positions 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 and unfair business practices, and arms 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 working at Scale AI, Kim worked on early safety AI initiatives, like leading a project that produced training data for AI to train systems to detect harmful 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 doesn’t implicate Musk himself as a reason for a lack of safety. Rather, Kim’s lawyers describe Musk as having directed 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 that Ba ignored Musk’s directives and retaliated against Kim for pushing for safeguards, in an effort to “silence his repeated complaints about AI safety and biases.”
The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who vehemently opposed AI safety measures, allegedly telling Kim at one point “AI will kill us all anyway,” and who was instead driven by a mission to make xAI the first to reach 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 says. “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 intended to give a presentation of his findings the week of September 15, 2025, but Ba called him into a meeting and told him they should “go [their] separate ways” without providing a satisfactory reason.
TechCrunch has reached out to Ba for comment.
Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX’s conduct was unlawful.
The OK Movement has said that the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, remains committed to delivering a new direction for Nigeria.
The Movement said this on Tuesday in a post on its verified X handle.
This came after the the meeting between the Vice-presidential candidate and the national leader of the party on Tuesday.
“With both our presidential and vice-presidential candidates duly uploaded, the NDC remains united, focused, and fully committed to delivering a new direction for Nigeria.
“The National Leader of the NDC, Seriake Dickson, today held a strategic meeting with our Vice Presidential Candidate, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
“We are pleased to announce that Kwankwaso has been successfully uploaded to the INEC portal as the duly nominated Vice Presidential Candidate of the NDC for the 2027 Presidential Election.
Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, has called on Nigerian politicians to desist from politicising everything, including judicial matters, stating that it is not healthy for the nation’s democracy.
Sani made this remark on Tuesday when he featured in an interview on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’.
He was speaking on the recent court judgement on the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC.
Recall that a Federal High Court in Lokoja, Kogi State, set aside its earlier judgment directing the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to register the NDC as a political party.
Reacting, Sani said, “When it favours politicians, they feel the judiciary is the best place to go, when it goes against them, they feel the judiciary is the worst place to go.
“For some of us that believe in democracy and the rule of law, we have to be very careful. Politicizing every issue is not healthy for us, because many actors that are involved in this NDC issue have been beneficiaries of the judiciary.
“Maybe you have to cast your mind back that even the NDC presidential candidate, Peter Obi, was also someone that benefited from a very strong judicial pronouncement when he was governor of Anambra state.”
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