The most impactful decision I made was to build a team in London instead of moving to Palo Alto. It opened up a great talent pool for the company but also meant I couldn't effectively lead a big area. I probably should have at least split my time evenly between the locations.

Contrary to what most Reddit mods and some journalists want you to believe, Elon is actually deeply involved in all aspects of technical development at xAI. However, his engagement deepened over time. In the early days, we largely self-organized the day-to-day work. Exceptionally talented and highly motivated people love solving difficult problems. They’re almost addicted to being the ones who publish the paper, write the library, or release the product. Chasing success is the most intellectual form of narcissism. These people don’t just seek challenging environments; they can create them. Not intentionally but implicitly. If you’re an S-tier gamer, you don’t waste time doing the tutorial. You play on the most extreme difficulty level. And if your team is stacked, you may end up with an environment that doesn’t just celebrate exceptional abilities; it necessitates them. Self-sufficiency and thriving in ambiguity are some of the most important qualities of great engineers. You can trust them to independently find answers to difficult questions and make progress without supervision. But trust (just like hope) is not a strategy. If everyone thrives in ambiguity, everyone will repeatedly find similar but distinct answers to the same questions. Over time, it causes major misalignment. There is no sole reason it took so long to launch grok .com. The delay simply was circumstantial and unintentional. The important lesson extends beyond this narrow example: When starting a company, create an environment that is simple. Don’t leave important questions unanswered, actively minimize the skills needed for being productive, make sure everyone’s energy is focused on making progress in the same direction. Complexity kills progress and misalignment causes stagnation.

At 1:30 a.m. PT on November 3, 2023 Elon sent a message to the xAI group chat saying that we need to go “extremely hardcore” for the next 36 hours; Grok will be released publicly tomorrow. You didn’t have to be in the exclusive company chat to get the message; it was also posted publicly at the same time: x.com/i/status/1720372289378… What unfolded over the next day and a half was one of the best examples of engineering at pace that I’ve ever seen. All we had when we started was a somewhat fine-tuned base model and a half-baked UI. Our team of ten split up the tasks: curate data, improve the model, implement the raw prompting and RAG service, build the production infra. I took care of the latter. At 8:51 p.m. PT the next day, we announced Grok to the world with a long-form post on X (x.com/xai/status/17210273489…). Over the past 36 hours, we came up with Fun mode (including Grok’s sunglasses), finished the whole production system, and most importantly tuned the RAG system that gave it real-time knowledge of the world through the X platform (a first in the industry). A day and a half of straight coding and shipping; no drugs, not even caffeine, just pure adrenaline. Elon gave us a mission and we delivered. The launch went very well. We invited a couple hundred X creators and Grok’s ability to roast accounts went viral. It was the first time a publicly accessible AI was allowed to poke fun at people. This episode is a prime example of what you can achieve by going extremely hardcore: you move and deliver results faster than any outsider could have anticipated. Within 36 hours, we took the company from silence to relevance. It was well worth it. xAI’s hardcore culture is infamous on X. I love the tent meme that suggests we all sleep (well, slept in my case) in the office in tents. Our reputation precedes us and even new joiners hit the ground grinding hard. However, unless you understand the “why,” you are at risk of simply replicating the “how” without achieving the same results. You need to grind with purpose and the purpose is to move fast towards a known goal. When the goal and the means of reaching it are crystal clear, a small, skilled, and highly motivated team can outcompete companies old and new, big and small. Never grind to show off; never work late to be seen; never sacrifice without cause. There is no medal for the one who tried extremely hard but failed. There is only a medal for the winner. If all your efforts lead nowhere, you’re arguably not very productive. Always keep your eyes firmly on the goal, do everything to reach it as quickly as possible, and make sure you're on track to win. A hardcore engineering culture is one of the most effective ways of accelerating real progress. Watch out for performative sacrifice and don’t confuse pain with progress.