xAI Poaches Two Executives from Cursor, Aiming to Catch Up in Code AI Development

Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg

According to sources, Elon Musk’s xAI is hiring two senior executives from Cursor to catch up in the code AI field, where they lag behind competitors. The reports say that Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg will report directly to Musk.

This recruitment comes after a series of high-level departures at xAI, including most of the co-founders. Meanwhile, Musk has publicly admitted that the company’s Grok model is behind competitors in coding capabilities. During a meeting on Wednesday, Musk stated that xAI “is currently behind in the coding domain,” but he expects to “catch up and surpass competitors by mid-2026.”

Both Milich and Ginsberg previously served as engineering product leads at Cursor and also worked as venture scouts at Sequoia Capital, responsible for identifying potential investments.

Cursor is one of the leading startups providing AI coding assistants for developers. The company was valued at nearly $30 billion in its last funding round. As of February this year, its annual recurring revenue skyrocketed from $150 million a year earlier to $2 billion.

However, Cursor faces increasing competition from its AI large model technology providers, including Anthropic, which launched Claude Code last year.

Earlier, xAI had discussions with Cursor regarding licensing or purchasing data related to engineers writing and editing code, in collaboration with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Since being acquired by SpaceX in February, xAI has been working to build enterprise-level services. Last August, the company launched a dedicated coding model, Grok Code Fast 1.

In recent months, xAI’s executive team has experienced instability. On Thursday, Business Insider reported that Zihang Dai, co-founder responsible for the code intelligence team, has left the company. Other recent departures include co-founders Toby Pohlen, Tony Wu, and Jimmy Ba. Of the 12 founding members of xAI, only three, including Musk, remain with the company.