Musk’s xAI is luring Wall Street pros to train Grok on finance

Looking for a job? xAI, owned by Elon Musk, is on the lookout for bankers and finance specialists to train its chatbot Grok on financial markets. The company is set for a head start as competition among AI companies to attract business users intensifies.

xAI is recruiting bankers, traders, and private credit lenders to help train its chatbot, Grok, to understand financial markets and complex investment strategies.

“You will leverage your expertise in equity capital markets transactions, IPOs, follow-on offerings, secondary offerings, underwriting, bookbuilding, prospectus drafting, roadshows, and equity issuance processes to support the training of AI systems,” states one of the job ads for an “investment banking expert” role at xAI.

The descriptions of candidates xAI is looking to hire suggest they should be professionals from the highest ranks of the financial market. Some job listings specify that the potential hire could be someone who has previously held roles such as “ECM analyst, associate, vice president, or director in investment banking,” with a focus on equity capital markets.

The wave of new hires aims to pull in experts in cryptocurrencies and stock markets, suggesting the company wants Grok to better handle questions about investing and financial decision-making.

“You will teach the models how crypto quantitative traders analyze blockchain data, model tokenomics, evaluate on-chain flows, manage extreme volatility, exploit inefficiencies across centralized and decentralized venues, and reason through novel digital asset paradigms,” claims the ad for “finance expert – crypto” position.

Better-paying customers require better services

xAI’s strategy isn’t new to the market. Technology companies developing AI products have been increasingly trying to attract top-tier customers who are willing to pay for advanced software tools.

So far, xAI is lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The latter companies have already introduced Claude for Financial Services, ChatGPT for Excel, and ChatGPT Business – products which are designed to help analysts summarize financial data, prepare reports, and evaluate market trends.

Musk himself was the first to admit the issues. The founder of xAI is not one to apologize often, but last week he wrote on X that xAI “was not built right first time around” and is now “being rebuilt from the foundations up.”

However, the pursuit to educate Grok on finance is still ongoing.

As per Bloomberg’s report, xAI relies on staff who train Grok by feeding it data and adjusting the chatbot’s replies for those who are seeking answers.

The person leading the team of so-called AI tutors is a recent high school graduate, Diego Pasini, who has been with the company for just over a year.

He has previously claimed that “one of the bottlenecks is training data,” as Grok mainly “feeds” on information and behavioral patterns it finds on X.

Hiring AI tutors who could train the large language model on information outside of X is supposedly one of xAI’s hiring priorities.

Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.