Elon Musk Owes Employees Rp7 Million, Payment Proving Difficult to Collect

Elon Musk is reported to owe US$420 (about Rp7 million) to a number of his company’s employees. Bloomberg reports say the debt arose from a promised cash bonus to xAI staff willing to hand over their personal tax data to be used for training the Grok AI chatbot. Citing Engadget, the programme was run earlier this year ahead of the United States’ tax deadline on 15 April 2026. xAI is said to aim to boost Grok’s capabilities to compete with other AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, which are more widely used to manage tax filings. According to the report, xAI managers offered a cash payment of US$420 to employees willing to submit complete tax documents and supporting data from this year and previous years. In addition to the cash, staff were promised early access to X Money, the digital payments service that the X social media platform is developing. A number of employees eventually handed over the sensitive data. However, months later, the promised payments had not been received. The employees reportedly chased the payments but were told the manager handling the programme was no longer with the company. To date, xAI has not provided an official response to Bloomberg’s report. The US$420 figure has drawn attention; the amount is associated with cannabis culture since the 1970s and has been used by Musk in various public posts. Previously, Musk sparked a stir after posting that he had secured funding to purchase all Tesla shares at US$420 per share, a statement that briefly unsettled the market and led Nasdaq to halt trading in Tesla stock. Musk later faced a securities fraud lawsuit from the SEC, though he was ultimately not held liable for investor losses arising from the posting. In the court case, Musk said that posting something does not mean people will believe it or act on what he posts.