Grok Imagine's video generation feature has not been shut down, but the team that builds it has been nearly emptied out. The Information reported on November 13 that SpaceX's artificial intelligence division laid off about 60 people from the Grok Imagine team over the past week, leaving only a handful to keep the product running. At the same time, resources are shifting toward AI coding tools and the Grok Bot agent — the second major change of direction for Musk's AI business this year, after xAI was folded into SpaceX in February.
Which Team Was Cut
Grok Imagine is the image and video generation feature attached to the Grok chatbot, letting users ask the chatbot directly for pictures or short clips. The cuts hit the video side of that operation: about 60 people, more than half the team. Citing people familiar with the matter, The Information reported that independent benchmarks showed Grok Imagine trailing the leading video models, and that video generation consumes far more computing power than text — the direct reason management redid the cost-benefit math. The report also said Chinese companies are pulling ahead in video generation. As of publication, neither SpaceX nor Musk has commented publicly on the layoff report, and the figure of about 60 comes from The Information, not from an official company statement.
Cutting Video, Betting on Coding and Agents
The layoffs are not an isolated move but part of a reorganization of SpaceX's AI division. After xAI was merged into SpaceX in February, the AI business was split into four areas — the main Grok product and voice, coding, Imagine, and Macrohard — and in August SpaceX completed its acquisition of the AI coding assistant Cursor. Taken together, the ordering is clear: coding tools and autonomous agents come first, video generation comes second. Grok Bot is the beneficiary of that ordering: it can place phone calls for users and handle multi-step tasks, and it has already begun rolling out to users. Meanwhile, xAI's official news page has not mentioned Imagine since August 7, and 12 of its last 25 updates were all about Grok Bot.
What Users Will Feel Now
In the short term, Imagine still works, and image and video generation remain available through Grok conversations. But the change is already visible: around November 12–13, many users found that the Imagine entry had disappeared from Grok's sidebar, and grok.com/imagine now opens the normal chat in image and video mode. With no dedicated team driving it, the pace of future model upgrades and new features for Imagine is now in question. Video generation was already a shrinking field this year, and SpaceX's cut amounts to an admission: with limited computing power and talent, protect the coding tools and agents that can generate revenue directly first. As for whether Imagine will eventually be shut down, SpaceX has said nothing — while the other end of the Grok ecosystem is still expanding fast.
