In a significant move within the AI industry, Dustin Tran, a prominent deep learning expert from Google DeepMind, has joined Elon Musk’s xAI to help develop the next generation of the Grok series. The announcement came after Tran posted about his transition on social media, which Musk quickly shared, confirming the news. Tran played a central role in the development of Google’s Gemini project, contributing to its evolution across multiple critical stages. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014, followed by a PhD in statistics from Harvard University and a doctorate in computer science from Columbia University. His academic work has been widely recognized, with over 24,000 citations and honors including the Google PhD Fellowship. In a reflective farewell post, Tran detailed his eight-year journey at Google DeepMind, highlighting the challenges the team faced early on, when skepticism surrounded Google’s AI ambitions. He noted how that perception shifted as Gemini gained user preference and delivered notable scientific advancements. He cited xAI’s massive computational and data resources as key reasons for his move, particularly the power of Colossus 2, which he believes gives the company a competitive edge in developing frontier AI models. xAI has already demonstrated strong technical capabilities with the release of Grok 4 Fast, a lightweight reasoning model that, despite slower inference speeds, stands out for its performance and cost efficiency—making it one of the best in its category. With Tran’s expertise in deep learning and model architecture, his arrival is expected to significantly accelerate the development of Grok 5. As xAI continues to invest heavily in infrastructure and data, the stage is set for further breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.