Elon Musk’s xAI hosts Massachusetts AI Coalition event in Boston

At a Tesla showroom event in Back Bay last Wednesday, employees from Elon Musk’s xAI hosted one of the first meetings of the recently-formed Massachusetts AI Coalition, a group created to support Massachusetts’ artificial intelligence companies.

Two Boston-based employees of xAI — Elon Musk’s AI company that is a sister company to X, the social media platform — helped organize the event. Both are focused on corporate sales of the company’s Grok AI platform, not technology development.

xAI doesn’t seem to have a local office yet, and there are no jobs posted on the company’s website that suggest they’re hiring here. Just a handful of xAI employees list their location as Boston on LinkedIn, most of them focused on sales.

The invite-only event last week was hosted by Steven Murray, xAI’s area director for enterprise sales in the Northeast, and included a live demo of Grok’s “enterprise offerings” and “an exclusive first look at xAI’s 2026 roadmap,” according to the invitation.

One of the speakers at last week’s event was Eric Paley, the state’s secretary of economic development. He said afterward, via text message, that the state hadn’t offered any incentives to encourage xAI to add jobs in Massachusetts.

“AI companies are choosing Massachusetts for one reason above all else: access to the world’s leading talent,” Paley wrote. “If you’re an AI company and you’re not in Massachusetts, you’re missing out.”

xAI didn’t respond to requests for comment about its hiring plans. Ryan Durkin, one of the organizers of the AI Coalition and a vice president at the fitness tech startup Whoop, said that xAI is not yet a member of the coalition. He added that “one of the AI Coalition’s goals is to encourage more companies to join us here and establish offices and roots in Massachusetts.”

Tech recruiter Phil Perkins, who specializes in placing AI engineers, said that he hasn’t seen xAI hiring engineers locally. But he said he wasn’t surprised to see the company hiring salespeople: “The most hungry salespeople tend to be from the New England area,” Perkins said.

xAI and Grok have been in the news this month because of technology that has allowed users to create fake nude images of people — including minors — without their consent. The company said earlier this month that it would block that capability in places where it is illegal.

This week, the European Union opened an investigation into the company’s practices, and the attorneys general of 35 U.S. states recently sent xAI a letter imploring it to “be a leader in this space by further addressing the harms resulting from this technology.”

xAI’s sister company, X (formerly Twitter), once maintained an office across the street from Boston’s City Hall. In late 2022, Musk began a round of layoffs after acquiring the company, including 55 employees at the Boston office. Those layoffs resulted in a class action lawsuit, and X’s non-payment of rent on the office sparked another suit.

Earlier this month, privately held xAI raised $20 billion from a group of investors, including Boston-based Fidelity.