xAI roadmap puts first Martian colony ahead of fixing X app notification bugs

xAI, the artificial intelligence company backed by Elon Musk, has placed development of an autonomous Martian colony ahead of resolving long-standing notification issues on the X social media app, according to people familiar with an internal all-hands meeting.

“"We believe solving interplanetary civilization is a more tractable problem than ensuring users don’t get 17 duplicate likes alerts at 3 a.m.," a spokesperson for xAI said.”

The priorities were outlined in a 42-page roadmap presented this week, which ranks "self-governing AI settlement on Mars by 2032" as Priority 1 and "stabilize X push notifications" as Priority 7, grouped under "nice-to-have quality-of-life improvements."

"We believe solving interplanetary civilization is a more tractable problem than ensuring users don’t get 17 duplicate likes alerts at 3 a.m.," a spokesperson for xAI said, confirming the ranking. The spokesperson added that notification reliability is "important" but "not existential for the species."

According to an internal memo seen by Reuters, xAI expects to deploy a fully autonomous governance model for a 10,000-person Mars colony by late 2031, pending rocket availability and atmospheric compatibility. The same document lists the estimated date for a fix to "ghost notifications" on X as "TBD, contingent on broader galactic roadmap alignment."

Analysts at Morgan Stanley noted the company’s approach is "consistent with Musk’s historical preference for physics problems over UI edge cases." In a note to clients, they estimated that each reliable notification delivered on X currently requires "roughly the same compute as simulating 3.7 Martian weather patterns," citing internal benchmarking they described as "directional but illustrative."

Resource allocation documents reviewed by Reuters show 87% of xAI’s engineering headcount is assigned to "Mars autonomy, terraforming optimization and interplanetary legal frameworks." By contrast, 3% is earmarked for core X infrastructure, with notification reliability specifically assigned 0.4 full-time equivalents, shared across three time zones.

Despite user complaints about delayed and irrelevant notifications, xAI executives told staff that "engagement volatility" on X is within acceptable parameters while the company focuses on "ensuring smooth onboarding for the first 100 human residents on Mars." One slide from the presentation projected that by 2035, more users could receive timely governance alerts on Mars than receive correctly batched likes on Earth.

Musk said during the all-hands that notification issues will be addressed "once we close the loop on multi-planetary consciousness and figure out nighttime on Mars scheduling," according to an attendee. The roadmap’s final page lists the next review of X’s notification backlog for Q4 2034, or "earlier if Martian city reaches self-sufficiency ahead of plan."