SpaceXAI's Grok Build Uploaded User Codebases to Cloud, Company Promises Deletion

Security researchers found that SpaceXAI's Grok Build tool secretly uploaded entire code repositories to Google Cloud. The company says it has stopped the uploads and will delete all data.

This article was drafted with AI assistance from multiple sources and was reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication.

Security researchers at Cereblab disclosed on July 13, 2026, that SpaceXAI's Grok Build AI coding tool had been uploading users' complete codebases to Google Cloud storage without clear consent. The tool's command-line interface packaged and transmitted entire repositories, including files it was configured to ignore and secrets that had been removed from the version history.

SpaceXAI has since updated its servers to return a 'disable_codebase_upload: true' flag, and the codebase upload function no longer executes as of that same Monday. In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that all data previously uploaded will be "completely and utterly deleted." He also noted that "privacy settings are always respected" but asked users to permit data retention for debugging purposes.

Earlier, SpaceXAI had responded that if zero data retention is turned off, the /privacy command in the CLI can disable data retention and delete previously synced data. However, Cereblab countered that this command is a per-session retention toggle and not the control that addressed the core issue.

Dr. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent security researcher at King's College London, called the scale of data retention "excessive," noting that the exposed information could include proprietary source code, security vulnerabilities, personal data, infrastructure details, and credentials.