Aman Gottumukkala, a Texas-based software engineer who built the AI coding startup Firebender, just announced he’s joining xAI, the AI company started by Elon Musk.
Aman, who has Indian roots, created Firebender specifically for Android developers. With only three people on his team, they managed to pull in millions.
Aman Gottumukkala joins Elon Musk’s xAI
Aman shared the news himself on social media, saying he’ll be working on advanced coding AI systems and teaming up with SpaceX folks.
In his post, Aman wrote, “I’m joining @SpaceX and @xai to build the best coding AI. For the past couple of years, I founded the most widely used coding agent for Android and grew it to millions in revenue with a three-person team.”
He talked about watching model capabilities take off insanely fast and said we’re right at the edge of recursive superintelligence. Aman called this “the most important problem to solve in history,” one that demands huge resources.
According to him, xAI is the place to build that future, frontier computing power, top talent, and real strength in both AI and space.
What will be Aman Gottumukkala’s annual salary?
There is no update on how much Aman Gottumukkala will earn annually. However, as per reports, his salary is likely to be in six figures since he has an impressive CV.
Who is Aman Gottumukkala?
Aman graduated from Texas A&M University, having received his bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2017-2021. He spent his time at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science before college.
His LinkedIn shows that prior to the founding of Firebender, Aman was a software engineer at Paradigm. There, he was conducting technical projects related to technology and the crypto ecosystem.
He is also a KP Fellow, having been selected under the Kleiner Perkins Fellowship, which is a very competitive programme where promising engineers and founders are matched with leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Numerous start-ups have emerged out of this fellowship.
I’m joining @SpaceX and @xai to build the best coding AI.
For the last couple 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…
— Aman Gottumukkala (@AmanGotchu) March 15, 2026
Story behind Aman Gottumukkala’s Firebrand
Firebender was built by Aman as an Android-focused AI coding assistant. The tool assists the programmers in writing, maintaining and structuring their code more effectively.
The software can be directly executed in the Android Studio and JetBrains IDEs, and thus, it allows developers to automate their day-to-day coding operations and accelerate coding processes.
Firebender immediately became popular among developers. It was adopted by engineering teams who needed to enhance productivity and save time on the routine work on repetitive code.
