GENERAL

Did xAI employees set up tents inside office, working extra hours for Grokipedia launch? Fact Check

Claim: The employees at xAI set up tents at the office while working extra hours for Grokipedia launch.

Conclusion: The claim is false. It originated in July 2025, before the launch of Grok 4 and has now resurfaced in October. Greg Yang, one of the co-founders of xAI, had officially denied it in July 2025 and one of the employees of xAI has also denied it in October 2025.

Rating: Totally False —

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Several social media users claimed that workers at xAI were camping in the office due to the immense work pressure. Verified X user ‘mark_k’ shared such a claim with the caption : ‘A look into the @xAI office today, on Grokipedia release day. It’s early morning and the xAI engineers are still in their tents. A good night’s sleep will often do wonders.’ The post gained around 2.5 million views and can be viewed below: 

Other users have also shared similar claim which can be viewed here, here and here

Elon Musk announced on October 18, 2025, that a “buggy beta version of Grokipedia V0.1” would be released on October 20, 2025, as an alternative platform to Wikipedia. However, on October 21, Musk postponed the debut  to “purge out the propaganda” and biased content, confirming no release occurred on the claimed date.

FACT CHECK

DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and found that it was false. There is no credible proof or evidence that suggests workers are living in those tents at the xAI office. Moreover, one of the xAI co-founders Greg Yang has officially debunked these rumours.

We first conducted a reverse image search to learn about the origin of the image. However, we did not come across the exact origin or any primary source. 

Upon conducting a web search using the phrase “xAI workers office tents,” we found a report published by the Hindustan Times in July 2025. The report mentioned that “Elon Musk, founder of the AI company, has repeatedly extolled the virtues of working overtime.”

However, it further stated that xAI co-founder Greg Yang publicly refuted the claims on July 2, saying, “That’s not our office; we have way more tents,” using humor to deny the depiction while acknowledging xAI’s intense work culture. 

View the post by Greg Yang here.

Another report published by Moneycontrol also covered these fake allegations that were being spread online. The report mentions that “the photographs lacked official confirmation, several users accepted the claim at face value, with reactions ranging from admiration for the engineers’ dedication to criticism”. They too have used Greg Yang’s tweet for clarification. View a section from the report below: 

Following this, we further tried to search for any recent clarifications to the 20th October, 2025 claims. On October 22, 2025, verified user ‘RamanKhatriTech’ who works at xAI shared a clarification post along the lines of what Greg Yang had shared in July. The post read : “since this image is gaining traction again, i wanna clear up this rumor. this isn’t the xAI office. the real office has way more tents.” debunking the false claim with humour. View the post here.

Thus, the claim is false.


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Shelton Rozario

Shelton Rozario is a final-year graduate student from the St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, enthusiastic in pursuing a career in journalism. He has joined Digiteye India in July 2025 as an Intern. He can be reached at sheltonr@digiteye.in More »

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