The AI lab interview round that asks the most questions isn't in the onsite.

Photo: Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

34% of reported questions at the top AI labs come from the technical screen, more than from any onsite round. 9 loops compared: rounds, question types and AI-tool rules.

• 34% of reported questions come from the technical screen, more than any onsite round.
• 4 to 8 rounds; 7 is typical. Cursor, part of SpaceXAI (formerly xAI), runs the shortest loop (4) around a one- or two-day onsite project.
• 54% of questions are coding. Mistral AI and Cohere are the exceptions: ML design leads there.
• AI tools split the labs. Not allowed at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Perplexity and Cursor; allowed at Cohere.

Seven rounds is typical; Cursor runs 4

Rounds from the first recruiter call to the last interview, as candidates report them. Cursor is part of SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) but hires through its own loop, so it gets its own row.

4 of 9 loops make you build something real

Every loop opens with a recruiter call and all but one have a technical screen. Four have a practical coding round, where you build or fix something real: OpenAI, SpaceXAI (xAI), Scale AI and Cursor (SpaceXAI).

More questions come up in the screen than in any onsite round

Share of 289 reported questions by the round they were asked in. The screen is where most loops end, so it is where the most reports come from.

Coding leads everywhere except Mistral AI and Cohere

Question types per company. Google DeepMind is left out: too few reports to chart.

AI tools: not allowed at 4 companies, allowed at 1

What this means for your prep

1. Treat the screen as the interview. More reported questions are asked there than in any other round; practice multi-part problems that grow every 15 minutes.
2. Practice building, not just solving. At OpenAI, SpaceXAI (xAI), Scale AI and Cursor (SpaceXAI), a round is about working code you would ship.
3. Match the mix. Interviewing at Mistral AI or Cohere? Spend more time on ML design than on algorithms.
4. Ask about AI tools in the recruiter call. Practice both ways if the answer is unclear.

   Methodology

   328 reported questions across nine loops at eight companies (Cursor is part of SpaceXAI, formerly xAI; one per question and company), 265 of them dated (Jun 7, 2025 to Oct 10, 2026; 151 in the last six months). Loops and AI-tool policies come from candidate reports and public guides, each loop checked in October 2026. Questions without a known round are left out of the round chart.

   Limits: reports lean toward software engineering roles, loops vary by team and level, and AI policies change. Google DeepMind had too few reports for the question charts.

   How we made this: Land the Lab counted the reports by company, round and type. The charts are generated from that data; the text was drafted with AI and checked against it.

Originally published at landthelab.com, where every company's interview loop is mapped round by round.