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Sleeping. Previously founding team @xAI, engineer @GoogleDeepMind. @RWTH alumnus.

605 following87k followers

The Visionary

Toby Pohlen is an engineering-first AI visionary who helped build xAI from the ground up and previously shipped research at Google DeepMind. He values clean execution over meetings, loves shipping product perfection, and is currently prioritizing the radical act of getting eight hours of sleep. His feed mixes mission-level thinking about 'understanding the universe' with sharp, practical notes for builders.

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Toby's bio reads 'Sleeping.', the most honest product roadmap I've seen: feature backlog, sprint planning, and now finally shipping 8 hours of sleep. Don't worry, he'll ship the nap in v2.0 with better docs.

Built and shipped at the founding team level of xAI, contributed thousands of PRs, helped shape an audacious mission ('understand the universe'), and converted that credibility into a ~87k-strong audience.

To build powerful AI tools that advance human understanding and to turn ambitious, universe-sized ideas into well-engineered, shipped products that actually help people learn and do more.

Believes in ruthless focus on execution, minimal internal politics, engineering rigor, and that AI should expand human knowledge rather than just automate tasks. Trusts shipping and feedback over endless discussion.

Exceptional at shipping complex engineering work, setting and defending a crisp mission, attracting top talent and attention, and distilling big ideas into pithy, high-impact tweets.

Perfectionism and extreme focus can lead to burnout (hence the sleep subplot), occasional terseness that can alienate non-engineer audiences, and a tendency to prioritize code over community-building rituals.

To grow on X, lean into short technical threads and 'lessons learned' posts from your thousand-PR journey (pin one). Mix one deep thread/week (design decisions, postmortems) with casual takes and hiring posts. Use behind-the-scenes clips or diagrams, host occasional Spaces/AMAs to convert passive followers to engaged fans, and retweet/quote key community replies to reward contributors, all while batching drafts so you can actually keep sleeping.

Bio literally says 'Sleeping.', after three years and thousands of PRs Toby left xAI and is prioritizing sleep, reflection, and capturing lessons learned. RWTH alumnus, ex-Google DeepMind engineer, founding team @xAI, ~87.7k followers, ~895 tweets.

Top tweets of Toby Pohlen

I love working at @xai. No pointless internal politics and virtually no meetings - just coding and shipping. I'll do another hiring push in London this month. Get your applications in now: x.ai/careers.

1M

Three years, thousands of PRs, and a million jokes. Today was my last day @xai. To the team: you rock, no one burns the midnight oil better. To @elonmusk, thanks for taking me on board. I've learnt more about execution, speed, and product perfectionism than I could ever have imagined. Thanks for everything. My next priorities: sleep for more than 8h, write down all the things I've learnt (I have a list), and then think about what I want to do next. @gork wdyt?

1M

You can now try Grok 3 for free here on X and on grok.com. We also released a blog post with benchmarks and examples. x.ai/blog/grok-3

1M

A few days before we announced @xai, Elon invited the founding team and our partners to Starbase. This is also where we agreed on our mission statement. In the evening we all had an amazing dinner together and talked about engineering until late. One of my favourite memories.

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Sounds enticing? Join us! Looking specifically for experienced C++/Rust backend engineers for grok.com and the API in the bay area: job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/47005
 The first interview only takes 15 minutes. Here are some of my retired questions for this role & interview: - Assume you want to write your own string struct. What fields would you define on the struct? - What are move semantics and why is moving a string faster than making a copy? - Explain the differences between preemptive and cooperative concurrency. - Where is the thread scheduler defined and when does it run? - Why is iterating over an array faster than iterating over a linked list even though both operations are O(n)?

2M

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Most engaged tweets of Toby Pohlen

You can now try Grok 3 for free here on X and on grok.com. We also released a blog post with benchmarks and examples. x.ai/blog/grok-3

1M

Three years, thousands of PRs, and a million jokes. Today was my last day @xai. To the team: you rock, no one burns the midnight oil better. To @elonmusk, thanks for taking me on board. I've learnt more about execution, speed, and product perfectionism than I could ever have imagined. Thanks for everything. My next priorities: sleep for more than 8h, write down all the things I've learnt (I have a list), and then think about what I want to do next. @gork wdyt?

1M

I love working at @xai. No pointless internal politics and virtually no meetings - just coding and shipping. I'll do another hiring push in London this month. Get your applications in now: x.ai/careers.

1M

Do you want to work for @xai in London? Now you can. We're looking for software engineers. Apply if you want to get stuff done, work with smart people, and get grilled in one of my coding interviews. Backend & data: boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/42769
 Full-stack: boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/42769


188k

Sounds enticing? Join us! Looking specifically for experienced C++/Rust backend engineers for grok.com and the API in the bay area: job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/47005
 The first interview only takes 15 minutes. Here are some of my retired questions for this role & interview: - Assume you want to write your own string struct. What fields would you define on the struct? - What are move semantics and why is moving a string faster than making a copy? - Explain the differences between preemptive and cooperative concurrency. - Where is the thread scheduler defined and when does it run? - Why is iterating over an array faster than iterating over a linked list even though both operations are O(n)?

2M

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