Who Is Devendra Singh Chaplot, the IIT Bombay Graduate Now at Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI?

New Delhi:  Devendra Singh Chaplot, an alumnus of IIT Bombay and Carnegie Mellon University, has joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI, where he will work closely with Musk and his team on building superintelligence. Musk himself welcomed Chaplot on X, underscoring the significance of his arrival at the frontier of AI and space technology. 

Early Education and Academic Excellence 

Chaplot’s journey began at IIT Bombay, where he graduated in 2014 with a B.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering and a minor in Applied Statistics. He was a top student, earning a CGPA of 9.51/10 in his core subjects. His academic path then led him to Carnegie Mellon University in the United States.  At CMU, he completed a Master’s in Language Technology with a near‑perfect GPA, followed by a Ph.D. in Machine Learning under renowned professors Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Abhinav Gupta. His doctoral research focused on building intelligent autonomous navigation agents blending robotics, computer vision, and AI. 

After his studies, Chaplot gained experience across some of the most influential tech companies. He worked as a Research Associate at Samsung Electronics in South Korea, followed by a stint at Apple’s Special Projects Group. His most impactful years were at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), where he contributed to cutting‑edge work at the intersection of computer vision and robotics. 

Chaplot later became part of the founding teams of two major AI startups. At Mistral AI, he helped train models like Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, and Mistral Large, while leading the multimodal research team that developed Pixtral 12B and Pixtral Large. He also set up and led Mistral’s U.S. office in Palo Alto. At Thinking Machines Lab, he worked on both research and product, including building Tinker, an API that allows anyone to train large language models. 

Joining SpaceX and xAI 

In his announcement post, Chaplot expressed excitement about combining physical and digital intelligence at SpaceX and xAI. He highlighted Musk’s deep understanding of hardware and the unique culture of high‑agency innovation at these companies. Chaplot sees this as a chance to advance fields he has been passionate about for years - robotics, AI model training, and building intelligence from the ground up. 

Chaplot’s trajectory from IIT Bombay to Carnegie Mellon and from FAIR to Mistral and Thinking Machines Lab shows a consistent focus on pushing the boundaries of AI. His move to SpaceX and xAI places him at the heart of Musk’s ambitious vision to merge artificial intelligence with real‑world engineering. 

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