Elon Musk gave xAI engineer a Cybertruck for 24-hour GPU win

An engineer at xAI earned a free Tesla Cybertruck after accepting a tight technical challenge from Elon Musk, according to a recent interview with xAI staff.

The story centers on Tyler, an engineer working on xAI’s GPU infrastructure who agreed to get a new training run working on fresh GPU hardware in just 24 hours.

During the conversation, xAI engineer Sulaiman Ghori recalled Musk’s offer in simple terms. He said Musk told Tyler: “you can get a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs within 24 hours,” and added that “we were training that night. He got the Cybertruck.”

Video:

How the 24-hour GPU challenge worked

The task went beyond a routine configuration job. New GPU racks at xAI’s Memphis facility needed to be cabled, configured, brought into the cluster, and pushed to the point where a large-scale AI training workload could actually run.

Engineers say such work commonly takes days or weeks at big AI labs, since it covers networking, drivers, scheduling systems, and monitoring. Even so, Ghori said the team managed to bring the GPUs online and launch a real training job within the 24-hour window Musk set out.

In this case, the deadline came with an unusual personal reward. A Cybertruck with an estimated value in the high five- to low six-figure range, based on current pricing.

The anecdote has drawn attention because it offers a glimpse into xAI’s internal culture, which current employees describe as intense but direct. Ghori framed the story as one of several informal “war stories and bets” that circulate inside the company.

Colossus and the race for AI scale

The Cybertruck story comes against the backdrop of xAI’s push to build out Colossus, which company describe as one of the largest AI training clusters in operation.

xAI moved from an empty industrial shell to a working supercomputer with around 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in roughly four months, and then expanded that footprint again within the same year.

Company filings suggest xAI has raised about 20 billion dollars in funding for this expansion, with further capital needs likely as it targets even larger GPU counts. This places xAI among the heaviest spenders in frontier AI, in line with major cloud providers and leading AI labs.

You can watch the full interview below: