xAI Hires Cursor Executives to Rebuild Failed AI Coding Tool From Scratch

Elon Musk's xAI is starting over—again. The company has hired two senior engineers from AI coding startup Cursor to rebuild its troubled Macrohard coding assistant after multiple failed iterations, leadership upheaval, and most of the original engineering team departing.

Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, both key figures in scaling Cursor to $2 billion in annualized revenue, joined xAI on March 12, 2026, confirming their moves on X. They will report directly to Musk and work on Macrohard, a joint xAI-Tesla automation tool positioned as a competitor to tools like OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code.

The rebuild represents a significant reset for xAI's developer tools ambitions. Macrohard was first presented internally in August 2025 but stalled due to leadership changes, suspension of a data project with 600 external contractors, and most of the original engineering team leaving xAI or transferring elsewhere. Musk publicly admitted failure in keeping pace with rivals, fired co-founders, and initiated the fresh start.

"Not built right the first time," Musk wrote on March 13, apologizing for past hiring errors. Half of xAI's original 11 co-founders have departed, including Zihang Dai, Guodong Zhang, Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang. Recent layoffs also affected Macrohard and Grok Imagine.

The hiring from Cursor underscores xAI's challenges in the competitive AI developer tools space. Cursor has become the leading alternative to GitHub Copilot, reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue faster than any developer tool in history. Meanwhile, xAI's Grok chatbot has struggled to gain meaningful traction against ChatGPT and Claude.

xAI is targeting around September 2026 for user-facing availability of the rebuilt tool—approximately six months from now—despite a history of delays. The company continues its hiring push for Macrohard and other teams.