LinkedIn co-founder and veteran investor Reid Hoffman didn't hold back on the Pioneers of AI podcast, slamming SpaceX as "not an AI company" and xAI as a "full-blown trainwreck" where all 11 co-founders have departed.
SpaceX: A 'Pricier CoreWeave'
SpaceX went public on June 12 with an AI infrastructure narrative, then quickly acquired AI coding tool Cursor. Hoffman called it a sign of weakness: "You're buying your way into AI with market cap." He likened SpaceX to IAC, a holding company built on serial acquisitions, not core tech. Renting GPUs to Anthropic? "You're just a pricier version of CoreWeave," he said, selling racks and power, not model capabilities.
xAI: All 11 Co-Founders Gone, Model Lagging
xAI's problems run deeper. By May 2026, all 11 original co-founders had left, with departures accelerating in February. Its flagship Grok trails behind Anthropic and OpenAI models on benchmarks, and the company is undergoing its third restructuring. Hoffman described its foundational model work as a "complete crash."
Anthropic's Export Controls: Politics Over Rule of Law
In mid-June, the US government used export control orders to block foreign access to two Anthropic models, Fable and Mythos. Hoffman called it "arbitrary" and "more like a grudge beat-down." He stressed the asymmetry: Anthropic got hit, OpenAI didn't, raising questions about due process.
OpenAI vs Anthropic: Different Turf, Not Zero-Sum
Hoffman sees them on separate tracks: Anthropic excels in coding and is expanding into design and law; OpenAI's ChatGPT is a consumer search front-end, while Codex is underrated. As for Cursor, recently acquired by SpaceX, Hoffman said its shine peaked months ago and is fading.
On the bubble question: "Saying all valuations are crazy is wrong, but saying some are isn't." He supports OpenAI and Anthropic's high valuations with a historical parallel: if AI becomes as ubiquitous as electricity, these firms will be key infrastructure providers. Unclear monetization today doesn't mean it won't appear.