Woofun AI reports that Elon Musk criticized the organizational culture within Silicon Valley artificial intelligence companies. He stated that for-profit entities portraying themselves as research laboratories are pretentious and toxic. Musk argued that these firms establish a hierarchical structure resembling "noblemen and peasants" by elevating researchers while marginalizing engineers. He emphasized that successful practitioners in both roles are fundamentally engineers at heart.

This commentary follows observations by Zhu Huaijiang, founder of a machine intelligence startup, who highlighted the flat structures of Chinese AI teams like DeepSeek and Kimi. Zhu noted that these organizations do not strictly separate research from engineering, allowing staff to switch between algorithms, data, and infrastructure to ensure model success.