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Indian-origin techie joins Musk’s xAI after building Firebender with just 3-person team

Thursday, 19 Mar, 2026
Aman Gottumukkala, Firebender founder, joins Musk's xAI to build advanced coding AI (Photo courtesy: Aman Gottumukkala/X)

New York: Aman Gottumukkala, a Texas-based software engineer known for building the AI coding startup Firebender, has announced that he is joining xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk. The Indian-origin techie built Firebender, an AI coding assistant designed especially for Android developers. With a team of just three people, the startup generated millions in revenue.

Sharing the update on social media, Aman said he will now work on building advanced coding AI systems. He also mentioned working alongside teams connected to SpaceX.

In a post on X, Aman wrote, “I’m joining @SpaceX and @xai to build the best coding AI. For the last couple of years, I founded the most widely used coding agent for Android, scaling it to millions in revenue with a team of 3.

I’ve watched model capabilities compound at a staggering rate, and we’re clearly on the brink of recursive superintelligence. This is the most important problem to solve in history and requires an immense amount of resources to realise.

xAI is the place to build the future. Frontier compute, extraordinary talent, and a strong hold on physical intelligence and space.

If you want to focus on executing towards the most important problems of our time, DM me. We’re in challenger mode, and we are building the winning team.”

Aman founded Firebender as an AI coding assistant designed specifically for Android developers. The tool helps programmers write, manage and organize their code more efficiently.

The software runs directly within popular development platforms such as Android Studio and JetBrains IDEs, allowing developers to automate routine coding tasks and speed up their work.

Firebender instantly got popular in the developer community. Engineering teams began using it to improve productivity and reduce the time spent on repetitive coding work. What made the story stand out was how small the team behind it was. With just three people working on it, the startup reportedly scaled to millions in revenue.

Aman studied computer science at Texas A&M University, where he completed his bachelor’s degree between 2017 and 2021. Before college, he attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science.