Tech Brew Ride Home · Thursday, July 16, 2026
AI, under new leadership from Michael Nichols, is reportedly in a race to match Anthropic's Claude chatbot performance, with internal memos highlighting goals to mirror Claude's updates. The company has faced significant internal challenges, including founder departures and management issues, leading to low employee morale and a lack of confidence in the company's own tools among engineers.
“This spring, when Elon Musk put Michael Nichols in charge of AI, his generative artificial intelligence company, the agenda was clear. Catch up with Anthropic's Claude chatbot.”
“Our near-term goals are to match performance of Claude.”
“XAI's own engineers wouldn't use its tools to code, relying instead on tools from Anthropic and OpenAI.”