xAI promised staff $420 per tax return for Grok training—payment never arrived

xAI asked employees to hand over their personal tax returns as training data for Grok this spring, offering $420 per filing. The request came in the weeks leading up to the April 15 U.S. tax deadline, when most Americans were preparing their 2025 returns. Employees who agreed to sell their filings expected payment shortly after submission.

Months later, according to Bloomberg, those employees still haven't been paid. The company has not communicated a timeline for delivering the promised compensation.

What stands out

1. 01The price point. The $420 figure mirrors Musk's 2018 "funding secured" tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 per share—a claim that triggered SEC fines and ongoing legal scrutiny. The choice of the same number suggests either deliberate callback or careless repetition.
2. 02The timing. The data request landed during peak tax season, when employees were already handling sensitive financial documents. Tax returns contain income details, deductions, dependents, investment gains, and other personal financial data that could theoretically help a language model understand tax code structure and filing patterns.
3. 03The silence on payment. Two months after the April deadline, participants have received neither payment nor explanation. The lack of follow-through raises questions about whether the data collection was formalized as a company program or treated as an informal ask.
4. 04The training-data angle. If xAI did collect employee tax filings, the data would likely feed into Grok's ability to answer tax-related queries or generate synthetic tax scenarios. U.S. tax returns are not public records for individuals, making employee submissions one of the few legal paths to obtaining real-world filings at scale.