Elon Musk welcomes IIT Bombay graduate Devendra Singh Chaplot to xAI team

Indian artificial intelligence researcher Devendra Singh Chaplot has announced that he is joining xAI and SpaceX to work on building what he calls “superintelligence.” The IIT Bombay alumnus said he will work closely with Elon Musk, marking a significant new chapter in his career at the forefront of AI and robotics innovation.

Chaplot announced the move in a viral post on X, revealing his excitement about joining the ambitious effort to develop next-generation artificial intelligence systems.

“I'm joining SpaceX and xAI, working closely with Elon and team to build superintelligence.”

He described the partnership between the two companies as uniquely positioned to push the boundaries of technology.

“Together, SpaceX and xAI combine physical and digital intelligence under a leader who understands hardware at the deepest level. Add a high-agency culture with frontier-scale resources, and you get the possibility to achieve something truly unique,” he said.

Chaplot also reflected on his journey in AI research and the experiences that shaped his work.

“I’ve obsessed over for years, from robotics research to building AI models on the founding teams of Mistral and TML,” Chaplot wrote in his post. “Both were extraordinary journeys with extraordinary people that shaped how I think about building intelligence from the ground up.”

Expressing gratitude as he begins this new role, he added: “Grateful for everything that brought me here and can’t wait to get started.”

Who is Devendra Singh Chaplot?

Devendra Singh Chaplot is a computer science graduate from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and holds a PhD in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon University.

Before joining xAI, he worked as a research scientist at Mistral AI, where he contributed to the development of next-generation AI models. Earlier in his career, he was a research scientist at Facebook AI Research, focusing on the intersection of machine learning, computer vision and robotics.

Chaplot has also worked at Samsung Electronics headquarters in South Korea and has led the design of several advanced AI systems. His work has won multiple global competitions, including the CVPR-2019 PointNav challenge, the CVPR-2020 ObjectNav challenge, the NeurIPS-2022 Rearrangement Habitat challenge and the Visual-Doom AI Competition in 2017.

A recipient of the Facebook Fellowship Award, Chaplot’s research has also earned Best Paper and Best Demo honours at leading AI conferences. His work has been featured in publications such as MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, Engadget, Popular Science, Kotaku and Daily Mail.

How did Elon Musk welcome him to xAI?

After Chaplot announced the move, Elon Musk shared the post and welcomed him to the team, writing simply: “Welcome to @xAI!”

The hiring comes as Musk signals a renewed focus on talent at xAI. Recently, he apologised for the company’s past hiring oversights and said interview records would be reviewed to reconnect with promising candidates who may have been missed.

Musk has also compared xAI’s ongoing rebuild to the early evolution of Tesla, suggesting that bold resets and fresh talent are central to pushing the frontier of artificial intelligence.