Half of xAI's founding team exits as Elon Musk calls departures necessary reorganization

Yet another co-founder departs Elon Musk's xAI

xAI co-founder Tony Wu abruptly announced his resignation from the company late Monday night, the latest in a string of senior executives to leave the Grok-maker in recent months. In a post on social media, Wu expressed warm feelings for his time at xAI, but said it was "time for my next chapter." The current era is one where "a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible," he wrote. The mention of what "a small team" can do could hint at a potential reason for Wu's departure. xAI reportedly had 1,200 employees as of March 2025, a number that included AI engineers and those focused more on the X social network. That number also included 900 employees that served solely as "AI tutors," though roughly 500 of those were reportedly laid off in September. Wu's departure comes just months after fellow xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin departed the company in August to start his own AI safety-focused venture capital firm. Co-founders Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy also departed the company since its 2023 founding, and co-founder Greg Yang stepped back from the company last month amid complications from chronic Lyme disease. Other recent high-profile xAI departures include general counsel Robert Keele, communications executives Dave Heinzinger and John Stoll, head of product engineering Haofei Wang, and CFO Mike Liberatore, who left for a role at OpenAI after just 102 days of what he called "120+ hour weeks." A different company Wu leaves a company that is in a very different place than it was when he helped create it in 2023. His departure comes just days after CEO Elon Musk merged xAI with SpaceX, a move Musk says will allow for orbiting data centers and, eventually, "scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!" But some see the move as more of a financial engineering play, combining xAI's nearly $1 billion a year in losses and SpaceX's roughly $8 billion in annual profits into a single, more IPO-ready entity. Musk previously rolled social media network X (formerly Twitter) into a unified entity with xAI back in March. At the time of the deal, X was valued at $33 billion, 25 percent less than Musk paid for the social network in 2022. xAI has faced a fresh wave of criticism in recent months over Grok's willingness to generate sexualized images of minors. That has led to an investigation by California's attorney general and a police raid of the company's Paris offices.

Elon Musk suggests spate of xAI exits have been push, not pull | TechCrunch

Elon Musk is addressing a wave of departures from xAI, including two more co-founders who left this week, bringing the total to six out of the original 12. At an all-hands meeting Tuesday night, Musk suggested the exits were about fit, not performance. "Because we've reached a certain scale, we're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale," he said, according to The New York Times. "And actually, when this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages." Wednesday afternoon on X, he went further, making clear these departures weren't voluntary. "xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution," Musk wrote. "As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism. This unfortunately required parting ways with some people." He added that the company is "hiring aggressively" and closed with a quintessentially Musk pitch: "Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you." Losing half your co-founders in a relatively short period raises questions, and Musk's comments seem designed to control the narrative, reframing the exits as necessary rather than a problem for the outfit. In total, at least 11 engineers, including the two co-founders, have publicly announced their departure from xAI in the past week -- though two of those exits appear to have occurred a few weeks ago. Three of the departing staff members have said they will be starting something new alongside other former xAI engineers, although no details are available about the new venture. Others have hinted at a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams to build frontier tech more rapidly, pointing to the anticipated surge in AI productivity. Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, an xAI co-founder and reasoning lead, said in a post announcing his resignation: "It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training at xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, said last week he was leaving to "start something new." Vahid Kazemi, who had a brief stint working on machine learning, posted Tuesday that he left a few weeks ago, adding: "IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring ... So, I'm starting something new." Roland Gavrilescu, a former xAI engineer, left in November to start Nuraline, a company building "forward-deployed AI agents," but posted again on Tuesday that he left the firm to build "something new with others that left xAI." The departures come at a moment of significant controversy for xAI. The company is facing regulatory scrutiny after Grok created nonconsensual explicit deepfakes of women and children that were disseminated on X -- French authorities last week raided X offices as part of an investigation. The company is also moving toward a planned IPO later this year, after being legally acquired by SpaceX last week. Musk is also facing personal controversy after files published by the Justice Department show extended conversations with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The emails show Musk discussing a visit to Epstein's island on two separate occasions, in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. xAI maintains a headcount of over 1,000 employees, so the departures are unlikely to affect the company's short-term capabilities. Still, the rapid pace of the recent departures had taken on a life of its own online, with users jokingly announcing on X that they too are "leaving xAI" despite never having worked there -- a sign of how quickly the narrative of a "mass exodus" snowballed on Musk's social network. Still, forced co-founder exits are rarely a sign of smooth scaling. While Musk frames the reorganization as calculated, the fact that several engineers followed the co-founders out the door -- and that at least three are starting something new together -- suggests the departures may also reflect deeper tensions. In frontier AI, where talent is scarce and reputation matters, xAI's ability to attract and retain top researchers will be tested as it competes with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for more information. The following employees have publicly announced their departures from xAI on X in recent days: February 6: Ayush Jaiswal, engineer, wrote: "This was my last week at xAI. Will be taking a few months to spend time with family & tinker with AI." February 7: Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training and was previously at X, wrote: "I left xAI to start something new, closing my 7+ year chapter working at Twitter, X, and xAI with so much gratitude." He added that working closely with Elon Musk taught him "obsessive attention to detail, maniacal urgency, and to think from first principles." February 9: Simon Zhai, MTS (member of technical staff), wrote: "Today is my last day at xAI, feeling very fortunate about the opportunity. It has been an amazing journey." February 9: Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, co-founder and reasoning lead, wrote: "I resigned from xAI today. It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." February 10: Jimmy Ba, co-founder and research/safety lead, wrote: "Last day at xAI. We are heading to an age of 100x productivity with the right tools. Recursive self improvement loops likely go live in the next 12 months. It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species." February 10: Vahid Kazemi, an ML PhD, wrote that he had left xAI "a few weeks ago," adding: "IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring. I think there's room for more creativity. So, I'm starting something new." February 10: Hang Gao, who worked on multimodal efforts, including Grok Imagine, wrote: "I left xAI today." He described his time there as "truly rewarding," citing contributions to Grok Imagine's releases and praising the team's "humble craftsmanship and ambitious vision." February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, the engineer who left in November to start Nuraline, posted: "I left xAI. Building something new with others that left xAI. We're hiring :)" February 10: Chace Lee, a member of the Macrohard founding team, wrote: "Taking a brief reset, then back to the frontier." (Macrohard is an AI-only software venture under xAI designed to fully automate software development, coding, and operations using Grok-powered, multi-agent systems. Its name is a dig at Microsoft.) February 11: Andrew Ma, who had been at xAI since X was called Twitter, worked on app and recommendation model improvements, including "the X video feed, search bar, user modeling, starter-packs and the home feed model." He wrote: "I'm excited about the future- not sure what I'll be doing yet (my DMs are open), but there is a world to be changed and no time to waste. Go team, stay focused, be energized, I can't wait to see you all on the moon and beyond, believe me when I say there is no one that I trust more on the entire planet to get there, there is a world to win." February 12: Radhakrishnan (Rad) Venkataramani, who worked on reasoning and reinforcement learning systems for Grok, wrote: "The last 8 months in RL systems/SWE-RL team pushing our coding model to be SOTA and toward recursive self improvement, will always be the most memorable of my lifetime...We're at an inflection point where intelligence begins accelerating itself, and from here the trajectory only goes vertical." This article was originally published February 11 and has been updated to include additional employee departures.

Senior engineers, including co-founders, exit xAI amid controversy

At least nine engineers, including two co-founders, have now publicly announced their departure from xAI in the past week - though two of those exits appear to have occurred a few weeks ago. Neither xAI nor Elon Musk have publicly commented on the departures. While attrition is typical at startups, co-founder departures are far less so. More than half of xAI's founding team has now left, and the fact that several employees followed within days has intensified scrutiny around the company's stability. Three of the departing staff members say they will be starting something new alongside other former xAI engineers, although no details are available about the new venture. Others hint at a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams to build frontier tech more rapidly, pointing to the anticipated surge in AI productivity. Yuhai (Tony) Wu, an xAI co-founder and reasoning lead, said in a post announcing his resignation: "It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, said last week he was leaving to "start something new." Valid Kazemi, who had a brief stint working on machine learning, posted Tuesday that he left a few weeks ago, adding: "IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring...So, I'm starting something new." Roland Gavrilescu, a former xAI engineer, left in November to start Nuraline, a company building "forward-deployed AI agents," but posted again on Tuesday that he left the firm to build "something new with others that left xAI." The departures come at a moment of significant controversy for xAI. The company is facing regulatory scrutiny after Grok created nonconsensual explicit deepfakes of women and children which were disseminated on X - French authorities last week raided X offices as part of an investigation. The company is also moving towards a planned IPO later this year, after being legally acquired by SpaceX last week. Musk is also facing personal controversy after files published by the Justice Department show extended conversations with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The emails show Musk discussing a visit to Epstein's island on two separate occasions, in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. xAI maintains a headcount of over 1,000 employees, so the departures are unlikely to affect the companies short-term capabilities. Still, the rapid pace of the recent departures has taken on a life of their own online, with users jokingly announcing they too are "leaving xAI" despite never having worked there -- a sign of how quickly the narrative of a "mass exodus" has snowballed on Musk's X. Still, co-founder exits are harder to dismiss as routine churn. As Musk continues to consolidate his AI ambitions, their departures raise broader questions about governance and long-term stability at xAI. In frontier AI, where talent is scarce, qualities like reputational gravity and mission clarity matter. The more pressing question may not be how many engineers have left, but whether xAI can maintain the institutional steadiness needed to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for more information. Timeline of departure announcements: The following employees have publicly announced their departures from xAI on X in recent days: February 6: Ayush Jaiswal, engineer, wrote: "This was my last week at xAI. Will be taking a few months to spend time with family & tinker with AI." February 7: Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training and was previously at X, wrote: "I left xAI to start something new, closing my 7+ year chapter working at Twitter, X, and xAI with so much gratitude." He added that working closely with Elon Musk taught him "obsessive attention to detail, maniacal urgency, and to think from first principles." February 9: Simon Zhai, MTS (member of technical staff), wrote: "Today is my last day at xAI, feeling very fortunate about the opportunity. It has been an amazing journey." February 10: Yuhai (Tony) Wu, co-founder and reasoning lead, wrote: "I resigned. It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." February 10: Jimmy Ba, co-founder and research/safety lead, wrote: "Last day at xAI... We are heading to an age of 100x productivity with the right tools. Recursive self improvement loops likely go live in the next 12 months. It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species." February 10: Vahid Kazemi, an ML PhD, wrote that he had left xAI "a few weeks ago," adding: "IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring. I think there's room for more creativity. So, I'm starting something new." February 10: Hang Gao, who worked on multimodal efforts including Grok Imagine, wrote: "I left xAI today." He described his time there as "truly rewarding," citing contributions to Grok Imagine's releases and praising the team's "humble craftsmanship and ambitious vision." February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, the engineer who left in November to start Nuraline, posted: "I left xAI. Building something new with others that left xAI. We're hiring :)" February 10: Chance Lee, a member of the Macrohard founding team, wrote: "Taking a brief reset then back to the frontier." (Macrohard is an AI-only software venture under xAI designed to fully automate software development, coding, and operations using Grok-powered, multi-agent systems. Its name is a dig at Microsoft.) Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We're reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry -- from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at [email protected] or Russell Brandom at [email protected]. For secure communication, you can contact them via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and russellbrandom.49.

Two more xAI co-founders are among those leaving after the SpaceX merger

Co-founder Yuhai (Tony) Wu announced his departure on X, writing that it was "time for [his] next chapter." Jimmy Ba, another co-founder, posted something similar later that day, saying it was "time to recalibrate [his] gradient on the big picture." The departures mean that xAI is now left with only half of its original 12 co-founders on staff. It all comes after changing plans for the future of the combined companies, which Elon Musk recently announced would involve "space-based AI" data centers and vertical integration involving "AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world's foremost real-time information and free speech platform." Musk reportedly also talked of plans to build an AI satellite factory and city on the moon in an internal xAI meeting.

Okay, now exactly half of xAI's founding team has left the company

Monday night, xAI co-founder Yuhuai (Tony) Wu announced he was leaving the company. "It's time for my next chapter," Wu wrote in a late-night post on X. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." Less than a day later, on Tuesday afternoon, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who reported directly to Musk, said that he, too, is bouncing, posting a gracious note on X on his way out. "Enormous thanks to @elonmusk for bringing us together on this incredible journey. So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close as a friend of the team," it read in part. On their own, both were pretty standard tech departure announcements -- but they're part of a troubling pattern for the lab. Six members of the company's 12-person founding team have now left the company, with five of the departures coming in just the last year. Infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic left for OpenAI in mid-2024, followed by Google veteran Christian Szegedy in February 2025. This past August, Igor Babuschkin left to found a venture firm, and Microsoft alum Greg Yang departed just last month, citing health issues. By all accounts, the splits have all been amicable, and there are lots of reasons why, nearly three years in, some founders might decide to move on. Elon Musk is a notoriously demanding boss, and with the SpaceX's acquisition of xAI complete and an IPO pending in the coming months, everyone involved has a pretty big windfall coming. It's a great time to be fundraising for an AI startup, so it's only natural for high-level researchers to want to strike out on their own. There are also less amicable reasons that might factor in. The company's flagship product, the Grok chatbot, has struggled with bizarre behavior and apparent internal tampering -- the kind of thing that might easily create friction on the technical team. Then there were the recent changes to xAI's image-generation tools that flooded the platform with deepfake pornography, sparking slow-moving but real legal consequences. Whatever the cause, the cumulative impact is alarming. There is a lot of work left to do at xAI, and an IPO will bring more scrutiny than the lab has ever faced before. With Musk already spinning up plans for orbital data centers, the pressure to make good on those plans will be intense. The pace of model development isn't slowing down, and if Grok can't keep pace with the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic, the IPO could easily suffer. In short, the stakes are high, and xAI needs to hold on to all the AI talent it can.

Elon Musk's xAI Is Having Trouble Holding on to Cofounders

Elon Musk's AI company has now lost half of its founding members. This week alone, xAI co-founders Jimmy Ba and Yuahai (Tony) Wu both announced their departure from the company, as TechCrunch reports. This follows other co-founders leaving over the past year, bringing the original 12 down to just six. "It's time for my next chapter," Wu tweeted. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." Ba followed suit a day later. He thanked Musk for his time at xAI, but said it was "time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture." In mid-2024, infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic left for OpenAI, where he serves as a member of technical staff. Christian Szegedy, mathematician and xAI researcher, left in February 2025 to work on superintelligence research. In August, Igor Babushkin left xAI to found a new venture capital firm. And Greg Yang moved into an advisory role in January to focus on his health after contracting Lyme disease. Individually, any of these departures wouldn't be a surprise for a relatively new startup working on cutting-edge technologies. But collectively, they are uncommon. As TechCrunch notes, though, Musk is a notoriously difficult boss, and the pace of AI development and competition has been extreme. In his goodbye tweet, Yang said he "pushed myself hard building xAI and weakened my immune system." This all comes as xAI has come under fire for allowing its Grok chatbot to produce sexualized images of women and girls without their knowledge. And who could forget last year's "mechahitler" fiasco? However, there may be a more obvious reason for the departures: SpaceX's upcoming IPO. Musk's space company acquired xAI ahead of an initial public offering, meaning these founders will soon have even more money in their pockets to shop around to investors. Other tech giants are not immune to high-profile departures. Meta reportedly spent millions to poach OpenAI execs, while several OpenAI leaders have left to start their own companies.

Elon Musk paints exodus of xAI co-founders as 'evolution'

Elon Musk has framed the recent exodus of talent from his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, as a necessary growing pain, saying the company's evolution "required parting ways with some people." Musk's post on X (formerly Twitter) followed an all-hands meeting at xAI where he told the audience: "We're actually going to have a mass driver on the Moon," although he acknowledged that such a thing was currently in the realm of science fiction. A mass driver is best thought of as an electromagnetic catapult that flings payloads into space at high velocities. That's an ideal thing to have if you wanted to, say, have a datacenter in space consisting of a million satellites. The science fiction reference was well made. Musk has a reputation for making bold statements and then singularly failing to deliver. Remember humans on Mars in 2024 or 2026? It would be impractical to list every missed prediction, but Musk's track record on timelines is relevant when assessing the credibility of new forecasts. Musk wrote: "Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you." Or head for the door, as half of the xAI founding team has already done. Yuhai Wu announced his departure on Monday, and Jimmy Ba packed up his things on Tuesday. Both were full of praise for xAI, but the fact that six members of the company's 12-person founding team have now departed is notable. Musk has spent the last few weeks rolling out one ambitious announcement after another. This month has seen SpaceX acquire xAI, plans for a datacenter in space, the abrupt pivot from missions to Mars to the Moon, and so on. Even in the fast-paced world of AI development, it is difficult not to imagine the whiplash felt by some employees within Musk's companies. Musk stated: "xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism." ®

Elon Musk Restructures xAI's Divisions After Co-Founders Depart

The exits follow xAI's recent merger with SpaceX, a move that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion, and could ease a funding crunch for xAI. Elon Musk said he reorganized xAI, his artificial intelligence startup, following the exit of two of its co-founders earlier this week. XAI will be organized in four core areas, the billionaire said in a meeting with staff: Grok's chatbot and voice product; Coding; the Imagine video product; and Macrohard, which will generate digital agents to run companies. Musk presented the plan in an all-hands meeting with xAI staffers, which he made public on the social network X. "What matters is velocity and acceleration," he said in the video posted on X. "If you are moving faster, you will be the leader." He also thanked the people who have departed the company. The meeting follows the back-to-back departures of Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, two of the startup's co-founders, along with a handful of other staff members who've left over the past few days. Twelve original xAI co-founders, including Musk, launched the company in 2023. Ba and Wu are the fifth and sixth from that group to exit in the past two years. Kyle Kosic left in 2024, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025. Greg Yang, another co-founder, said last month that he would step back from his role after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. The exits follow xAI's recent merger with SpaceX, a move that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. That deal could ease a funding crunch for xAI, which has been raising large sums of capital as it burns through cash in its bid to build out data centers, buy expensive computing chips and pay for talent.

Musk says xAI was reorganized, leading to some layoffs

Feb 11 (Reuters) - Elon Musk said on Wednesday that xAI has laid off some employees as part of a broader reorganization aimed at improving efficiency as the artificial intelligence firm expands. The latest changes at xAI come days after Musk's SpaceX said it will purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space. "xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution," Musk said in a post on X, adding that it "unfortunately required parting ways with some people." On Tuesday, xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba said in social media posts that they had resigned from the artificial intelligence firm they started with Musk less than three years ago, adding to an exodus from the company that has left it with half of its 12 co-founders. Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Musk announces xAI re-org following co-founder departures, SpaceX merger

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday announced the the company's xAI artificial intelligence venture implemented a reorganization that "required parting ways with some people." The overhaul was done "to improve speed of execution," Musk said in a post on X. He did not say which employees may have been cut as a result of the restructuring or which employees may have resigned of their own volition. Last week, Musk announced a record-setting, all-stock transaction in which SpaceX, the aerospace and defense juggernaut, acquired xAI, which owns and operates social network X and is the developer of Grok, the embattled AI chatbot and image generator. The deal valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion post merger, according to documents viewed by CNBC. Musk previously used xAI to acquire X, formerly Twitter, in another all-stock transaction announced in March 2025. The co-founder departures and the re-org this week come as SpaceX prepares to go public sometime this year and while xAI faces regulatory probes in multiple jurisdictions across Europe, Asia and the U.S. The probes are looking into whether xAI violated regional regulations after Grok enabled mass-creation and syndication of non-consensual, explicit images, colloquially known as deepfake porn. The images were based on photos of real people, including children. Musk launched xAI in 2023 alongside 11 other people in an effort to compete against OpenAI and Google. The company's stated goal was to "understand the true nature of the universe," according to its website at the time.

Nearly half of xAI's founding team has now left the company | TechCrunch

Monday night, xAI co-founder Yuhuai (Tony) Wu announced he was leaving the company. "It's time for my next chapter," Wu wrote in a late-night post on X. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." On its own, it's a pretty standard tech departure announcement -- but it's part of a troubling pattern for the lab. Five members of the company's 12-person founding team have now left the company, with four of the departures coming in just the last year. Infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic left for OpenAI in mid-2024, followed by Google veteran Christian Szegedy in February 2025. This past August, Igor Babushkin left to found a venture firm, and Microsoft alum Greg Yang departed just last month, citing health issues. By all accounts, the splits have all been amicable, and there are lots of reasons why, nearly three years in, some founders might decide to move on. Elon Musk is a notoriously demanding boss, and with the SpaceX's acquisition of xAI complete and an IPO pending in the coming months, everyone involved has a pretty big windfall coming. It's a great time to be fundraising for an AI startup, so it's only natural for high-level researchers to want to strike out on their own. There are also less amicable reasons that might factor in. The company's flagship product, the Grok chatbot, has struggled with bizarre behavior and apparent internal tampering -- the kind of thing that might easily create friction on the technical team. Then there were the recent changes to xAI's image-generation tools that flooded the platform with deepfake pornography, sparking slow-moving but real legal consequences. Whatever the cause, the cumulative impact is alarming. There is a lot of work left to do at xAI, and an IPO will bring more scrutiny than the lab has ever faced before. With Musk already spinning up plans for orbital data centers, the pressure to make good on those plans will be intense. The pace of model development isn't slowing down, and if Grok can't keep pace with the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic, the IPO could easily suffer. In short, the stakes are high, and xAI needs to hold on to all the AI talent it can.

The Best Time to Leave xAI Is Before Joining. The Next Best Time is Right Now

Earlier this week, Elon Musk's AI firm xAI lost cofounder Tony Wu. A day later, Jimmy Ba joined him in adding ex-xAI to his LinkedIn bio. Ba was the sixth member of the company's 12-person founding team to ditch the firm, leaving just half of the original crew still on board. They were followed by at least five staffers, according to a report from The Verge, who decided their time was better spent elsewhere. And while few of them had anything negative to say publicly as they collectively headed for the door, it's all a bit odd, right? One explanation is that the company is simply restructuring in the wake of the merger with SpaceX, another Musk company. Those types of acquisitions always lead to some restructuring, and Musk announced plans for “space-based AI†data centers, which does seem like the kind of thing that requires a pretty particular skillset, so maybe people are ditching because they're better suited for terrestrial projects. "xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism," Musk wrote on Twitter by way of an explanation for all the sudden departures. "This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors. We are hiring aggressively. Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you." The company is definitely hiring. Per a post from xAI engineer Ethan He, the company is looking for people to ramp up development of its world model. The role offers employees "Tons of GPUs and data. Flat structure. Competitive compensation. No politics." That last one is sure interesting. There are a couple of ways to interpret it. One perhaps more generous way would be that it means xAI is a non-political space, so prospective employees shouldn't worry about whether their views fit in. It's a bit of a stretch given that the company is owned by Elon Musk, the largest political donor to Donald Trump during 2024, and a guy who threatened to launch his own political party. He's also stated that xAI is making an explicitly "anti-woke" AI, so perhaps a more likely interpretation of the "no politics" perk is more like "Keep your politics at home in case we need to fine-tune Grok to talk about white genocide more often. Another explanation might be that it's just an ideal time to cash out. As part of the merger with SpaceX, the newly formed company reportedly issued $250 billion in new shares to xAI’s shareholders, including employees with stock options. SpaceX, per the Wall Street Journal, is one of several startups that offer employees regular tender offers to cash out. No better time to do that than after getting a whole bunch of shares gifted to you because your boss is probably financially manipulating the market. It's also kind of a good time to say "enough is enough" if you're an employee who has maintained even an ounce of a moral center. The Verge cites several former employees who said the vibes at the company have been pretty brutal lately. The recent controversy in which Grok was used to produce on-demand non-consensual nudes en masse certainly didn't help. But employees also said they have felt like they've been playing catch-up with other companies, which has led to cutting corners and burnout, as well as a disregard for safety and regulations. Seems like the best time to stop working for Elon Musk is as soon as possible, but it helps when you can cash out with a cool couple of million dollars on the way out.

Two co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI resign, joining exodus

Feb 10 (Reuters) - xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba have resigned from the artificial intelligence firm they started with billionaire Elon Musk less than three years ago, they said in social media posts. The exits are the latest in an exodus from xAI that leaves the firm with half of its 12 co-founders. The Financial Times reported that Ba's resignation followed tensions within its technical team over demands to improve its AI model performance as Musk pushes to catch up to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Ba did not immediately respond to a request for comment via X messaging on the FT report. Ba and Wu did not say in their posts on X why they were resigning or detail their next plans, but thanked Musk. The latest changes at xAI come days after Musk's SpaceX said it will purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space. Reporting by Natalia Bueno Rebolledo and Chris Thomas in Mexico City; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Elon Musk's xAI loses co-founder Tony Wu in latest senior departure

Musk launched xAI in 2023 alongside 11 other people in an effort to compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google. Tony Wu announced late on Monday that he resigned from the artificial intelligence startup, becoming the latest co-founder to leave the company. Others, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, have also departed, and Greg Yang announced last month that he would be stepping back from his role to focus on his battle with Lyme disease. "It's time for my next chapter," Wu wrote in a post on X. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." Tesla CEO Musk launched xAI in 2023 alongside 11 other people in an effort to compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google. The company's stated goal was to "understand the true nature of the universe," according to its website at the time. Last week, Musk announced that his rocket company SpaceX acquired xAI ahead of what could be a potentially massive IPO. The record-setting transaction is the largest merger of all time and values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, according to documents viewed by CNBC. Musk previously merged xAI with X in a multibillion-dollar deal he announced last March.

Elon Musk's xAI Can't Stop Bleeding Cofounders

xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, just lost yet another cofounder. Tony Wu announced on X today that he has resigned from the company, becoming the latest founding member to depart the AI startup since its launch in 2023. “This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together,†wrote Wu in a post. “It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible.†He added that he was grateful to Musk for “believing in the mission†and “the ride of a lifetime.†xAI was founded in 2023 by Musk and 11 other cofounders, many of whom previously worked at companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. That same year, the company released Grok as an alternative to popular chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Before founding xAI, Musk repeatedly complained that mainstream chatbots were too woke. However, in the years since xAI was founded, the company has experienced its share of ups and downs. The AI company merged with Musk’s social media platform X early last year. And just this month, xAI merged with another one of Musk’s companies, this time SpaceX. This merger comes as SpaceX is reportedly set to go public and launch an initial public offering this year. Meanwhile, Grok and X have faced mounting regulatory scrutiny in Europe. Paris prosecutors’ cybercrime unit, along with Europol and French national police, raided X’s offices last week as part of an investigation that began in January 2025. The probe initially focused on suspected manipulation of X’s recommendation algorithm and the extraction of unauthorized data. It has since widened to examine other possible violations, including complicity in the spread of pornographic images involving minors, the use of sexual deepfakes that infringe on people’s rights, and the circulation of Holocaust denial content. The city prosecutor’s office also announced that it has issued summonses to Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino for a hearing scheduled for April. X is also facing scrutiny from authorities in the U.K., the European Union, and California over similar concerns. Wu is not the first cofounder to leave. Kyle Kosic, Igor Babuschkin, and Christian Szegedy all departed over the past two years. And Greg Yang posted on X last month that he would step back from the company to focus on his health after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. Meanwhile, xAI is looking to hire. In a push to get the word out, one of the AI company's engineers, Ethan He, did his best to make it sound like a mundane company where a "small focused team" moves quickly to execute ambitious goals. "No politics," He emphasized.

Cofounders Fleeing Elon Musk's xAI

On paper, Elon Musk's xAI is gearing up for a big year. After being folded into Musk's SpaceX, the Grok maker could now be involved in one of the biggest -- if not the biggest -- IPO in history later this year. Despite plenty of optimism and an enormous wealth of unlocked funding, a striking number of the company's cofounders are now jumping ship. As CNBC reports, the company lost two of its cofounders in just two days, only the latest in a growing list of executives looking for greener pastures. "Grateful to have helped cofound at the start," AI researcher Jimmy Ba tweeted. "And enormous thanks to Elon Musk for bringing us together on this incredible journey." Fellow cofounder and University of Toronto professor Tony Wu, who worked on the latest generation of Grok chatbots, exited a day earlier, posting that "it's time for my next chapter" on Tuesday. They join a growing list of departed cofounders since the company kicked off in 2023. Igor Babuschkin left the company in August of last year, followed by Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy. Greg Yang, who has been battling Lyme disease, has also decided to step back from his role to focus on his health. As TechCrunch points out, exactly half of xAI's founding team of 12 individuals have now resigned following Ba's departure earlier this week. Following the news, Musk announced that he was reorganizing xAI, which could explain at least some of the recent departures. "As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism," Musk tweeted. "This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors." It remains unclear who was caught up in the firings or whether the cofounders left on their own accord. Musk said that xAI will be split up into four core areas, including Grok, "Coding," a text-to-video product dubbed "Imagine," and "Macrohard," an AI agent effort with a tongue-in-cheek name aimed at competitor Microsoft. "What matters is velocity and acceleration," he said in a video posted to X. "If you are moving faster, you will be the leader." It's a striking moment for a major exodus as the company gears up for its blockbuster IPO. X has been battling with a major crisis as deepfake pornography and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) continue to flood the platform, often created by Grok. xAI is caught up in several criminal investigations, and its Grok chatbot has been banned in several countries as a result. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers is ratcheting up pressure, calling on the company to take action to protect the public in an open letter last month. What the company will look like after its recent merger with SpaceX remains to be seen. Beyond refocusing the company to double down on text-to-video tools and AI agents, Musk has been turning his attention to launching date centers in space, a confluence that could help explain the unusual acquisition. With or without an edge when it comes to access to space, xAI has its work cut out to keep up. The competition is as steep as ever, and users continue to have access to several powerful AI models that aren't tainted by CSAM scandals. After parting ways with xAI's cofounders, Musk is looking to grow the company. "We are hiring aggressively," he tweeted today. "Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you."

X-odus: Half of xAI's founding team has left, potentially complicating Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO plans | Fortune

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up xAI is experiencing something of an exodus. The company has lost two cofounders and at least six other researchers in the last few weeks, according to public posts from employees. Jimmy Ba, a cofounder who led research and safety efforts at the company, announced his departure on Tuesday via an X post that thanked Musk and said he would "continue to stay close as a friend of the team." His exit followed hours after Monday's departure of Tony Wu, another cofounder who had led the company's reasoning team. Several other members of xAI's technical staff, including Hang Gao, have also announced their departures in the last week. The fresh exits mean that xAI's founding team has now been cut in half, with six of the original 12 members now gone. Five of those exits occurred within the past year alone, including Kyle Kosic, who oversaw infrastructure before jumping to OpenAI in mid-2024, and Christian Szegedy, a former Google engineer who left last February. Igor Babuschkin also left in August last year to launch his own venture capital firm, while Greg Yang, who previously worked at Microsoft, departed last month for health-related reasons. High turnover in the AI industry has not been unusual in recent months -- with researchers often jumping ship to rival labs or leaving to start their own ventures -- but the scale of the exits at xAI is unusual. Representatives for xAI did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment on the departures. The exact reasons for the departures are unclear, but Musk has just merged the AI company with his rocket company, SpaceX, in a consolidation of his business empire. Musk has characterized the merger as part of his ambitious vision to launch a network of data-center satellites capable of running advanced AI models from space. But some more skeptical of the merger have pointed out that it also provides a solution for xAI's massive capital requirements for chips, electricity, and infrastructure. Musk reportedly intends to take the combined SpaceX-xAI entity public as early as June. But the wave of departures, especially if it continues, could complicate those plans and spook potential investors. There have also reportedly been internal tensions at xAI over the pace of product development and technical demands amid intense competition. xAI's MacroHard-coding and agents project is competing with established and popular tools like OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code, while its AI chatbots -- including its "companions" -- are facing competition from ChatGPT and smaller companion-focused companies like Character.ai. xAI's companions have failed to deliver the engagement expected, leaving Musk frustrated, according to a report in the Financial Times. The start-up has also been weathering public controversies and global regulatory pressure over the last year. Late last year, xAI's Grok chatbot came under scrutiny from governments worldwide after the X platform was flooded with images of AI-generated non-consensual sexual imagery, including allegations of sexualized images of children, created by the bot. After some initial delays, xAI says it has updated the chatbot to block the creation of non-consensual specialized imagery. It wasn't the first time Grok had gone rogue on X. Last summer, the company was also forced to make changes to the chatbot after it began praising Hitler and making antisemitic posts across the social media platform. Over the past year, xAI has seen departures among its C-suite as well, including its general counsel, chief financial officer, and head of product engineering. xAI was merged with social networking platform X, formerly Twitter, in March 2025. Linda Yaccarino, who served as X's CEO, left in July and has not been replaced.

Musk addresses wave of departures from xAI

Elon Musk addressed recent departures of xAI staff members Wednesday on X, saying the company was recently "reorganized" to "improve the speed of execution," which "required parting ways with some people." This week, two co-founding members of Musk's xAI announced their departures. Several members of its technical staff also have announced that they would part ways with the company since January. xAI co-founder Tony Wu announced his resignation Tuesday on X, writing it was "time for my next chapter." Hours later, another co-founder, Jimmy Ba, announced that it was his last day. Wu's and Ba's exits leave only half of xAI's founding team still at the company after co-founder Greg Yang said he would step back in January after he was diagnosed with Lyme disease. Musk's SpaceX acquired xAI this month. Several members of xAI's technical staff also announced that they would no longer be working at the company. In addition to the co-founders who left, at least seven employees announced on X that they would be leaving since the start of the year. xAI did not respond to a request for comment verifying whether the people associated with those accounts had worked for and resigned from the company. Vahid Kazemi briefly was a member of xAI's technical staff, where he worked on multimodal models. He resigned a week before the SpaceX merger was announced and said there were "a lot of reasons for people to leave." Kazemi announced his departure Tuesday on X, writing that "all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring." Saying he worked around 12 hours a day while he was at the company, Kazemi told NBC News: "I mean, first of all, the working hours are crazy. Essentially, they take all your time, including the holidays and the weekends and everything." He added that the SpaceX merger may have caused people to leave. Kazemi said that the move did not come as a surprise but that he had expected that the company would merge with Tesla. Experts have told NBC News that Tesla could be likely to combine with xAI and SpaceX. "A lot of people just kind of realized it's not going to be a high-growth company that they thought it's going to be," Kazemi said. "A small AI lab is going to be growing much faster than a trillion-dollar space company." Shayan Salehian, another member of xAI's technical staff, announced last week that he would be leaving, saying he would be starting "something new." Salehian had worked with Musk's companies for over seven years, going from Twitter to X and then xAI, according to his post and his LinkedIn page. "Working closely with Elon across X and xAI, I saw what happens when you refuse to accept impossible as an answer," he wrote. "I learned to embody obsessive attention to detail, maniacal urgency, and to think from first principles."

xAI sees key staff exits, Musk promises moon factories

San Francisco (United States) (AFP) - Half of the original founding team at Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has now departed after two co-founders resigned in rapid succession this week, raising fresh questions about talent retention ahead of an expected initial public offering. The exodus comes at a delicate moment for xAI, which was valued at more than $200 billion when it was integrated with Musk's SpaceX rocket company last week. The merged entity is expected to go public as early as this summer. The company has also faced consumer backlash and regulatory scrutiny in multiple countries after its Grok chatbot and image generation tools enabled the mass creation of deepfake pornographic images, including of minors. Tony Wu announced his resignation late Monday in a post on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, writing that it was "time for my next chapter." Less than 24 hours later, fellow co-founder Jimmy Ba followed suit, calling Tuesday his last day and thanking Musk for "bringing us together on this incredible journey." The back-to-back exits bring the total number of departed co-founders to six out of the 12-member team that launched xAI in 2023 with the ambitious goal of challenging ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Other key staffers have also left in recent months. Ba, a prominent AI researcher, played a central role in the development of Grok chatbot models, including work on the forthcoming Grok 4. "It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture," he wrote. Wu helped build the company's core reasoning capabilities. Musk appeared to acknowledge the turnover during an all-hands meeting on Tuesday evening, according to The New York Times, telling staff that the company was reorganizing. "When this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages," he said, according to the newspaper. In the same meeting, Musk outlined sweeping ambitions for the merged xAI-SpaceX entity, including plans for a lunar factory to manufacture AI satellites, a space catapult to launch them into orbit, and data centers in space to expand xAI's computing power. The churn at xAI mirrors a wider pattern of staff turnover across the AI industry, where a fierce war for top talent has driven pay packages into the tens of millions of dollars and, reportedly in one case, past the billion-dollar mark.

Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu latest tech co-founders to exit Musk's xAI

The fifth and sixth founder departure from xAI comes just after SpaceX acquired the company for $250bn. xAI co-founders Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu are the latest to leave the AI start-up, meaning half of the company's founders have left. The fifth and sixth founder departure from the Elon Musk-owned AI start-up comes just after Musk's other venture SpaceX acquired xAI for a reported $250bn. The combined business makes SpaceX the world's largest private company, leagues ahead in valuation of the likes of OpenAI and TikTok-parent ByteDance. In a post on the Musk-owned social media platform X yesterday (10 February), Ba said: "It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species." While Wu's statement on X did not clarify what his plans post xAI will be. Both Ba and Wu attended the University of Toronto, and Wu worked as a research scientist intern at OpenAI and a research scientist at Google before co-founding xAI in 2023. Previously departing xAI co-founders include Kyle Kosic, who left in 2024, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025. Greg Yang, another co-founder, announced he would be stepping down last month after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. The remaining six co-founders include Elon Musk, Manuel Kroiss, Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Guodong Zhang and Ross Nordeen. xAI, the parent company behind X and AI chatbot Grok, has come under major scrutiny in recent weeks after an update to Grok allowed X users to prompt the AI bot to undress people in pictures and videos. A New York Times report found that millions of such pieces of content were generated on X. Despite X claiming it has blocked Grok from creating the sexualised images, the UK and the European Union have launched independent investigations into the social platform. French cybercrime prosecutors raided X's offices in the country earlier this month as part of a year-long investigation into the social site's content algorithm and Grok's alleged role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

People Keep Leaving xAI. Some Are Now Building Advanced AI That Can Improve Itself

About half of Elon Musk's founding team at xAI, the company behind the AI chatbot Grok, has now departed the company. Some are already teasing their next move, which could involve self-improving AI. Musk founded xAI in 2023 along with 11 team members, plucked from some of the most successful and well-respected AI companies and educational institutions. Now, six of those cofounders have left the company; two of them left this week. Several non-founding xAI employees have also announced their resignations. Musk's SpaceX acquired xAI earlier this month. The most recent drama occurred earlier this week. On Monday, February 9, xAI cofounder Tony Wu posted on X that he had resigned from the company. Wu thanked Musk for "believing in the mission and for the ride of a lifetime," but said "it's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." On February 10, less than 24 hours later, xAI cofounder Jimmy Ba also announced his departure. On X, he thanked Musk for "bringing us together on this incredible journey" and said that "the people and camaraderie are the real treasures at this place." Ba didn't give a reason for why he left, but did drop a major hint. He wrote that "we are heading to an age of 100x productivity with the right tools," and "recursive self improvement loops," which is basically AI that can constantly self-improve. He added that this kind of AI will "likely go live in the next 12mo." With this in mind, Ba wrote, "it's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species." According to the Financial Times, Ba left "following tensions among [xAI's] technical team over demands to improve its models." The FT also reported that some former staffers have "complained xAI's leadership overpromised to Musk on technical developments as they race to catch up to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic, creating unreasonable demands on them." Ba isn't the only former xAI member interested in self-improving AI. In November, former xAI staffer Roland Gavrilescu announced that he had left the company and started Nuraline, a startup building AI agents that can continuously learn and improve their own performance. On X, Gavrilescu recently teased that he is building this new company "with others that left xAI." The FT report also says that Musk has been particularly displeased with Microhard, the organization within xAI responsible for Grok's coding and agentic abilities. On February 10, founding Macrohard staffer Chace Lee posted on X that he had left the company. Musk is also reportedly frustrated by a lack of engagement in Grok's "companions" feature, which enables users to have erotic conversations with anime-style characters. The New York Times reported that during an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, Musk told xAI staff that he is focusing his attention on building an AI satellite factory on the moon, along with "a massive catapult to launch them into space." Musk apparently didn't mention the departures. The final deadline to apply for the 2026 Inc. Best Workplaces awards is Friday, February 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply here.

Two xAI cofounders announce departures in quick succession

Two co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI resigned with little explanation, leaving the AI company with half of its original dozen co-founders. Tony Wu announced early Tuesday that he had resigned from xAI, saying it was "time for my next chapter" and thanking Musk "for believing in the mission and for the ride of a lifetime." "This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever," he wrote in a post on X. "I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together." "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible," Wu added. "Thank you to the entire xAI family. Onward." His fellow co-founder, Jimmy Ba, also turned to X late Tuesday to announce that he had marked his "last day at xAI," noting it was "time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture." "Grateful to have helped cofound at the start," Ba said. "And enormous thanks to @elonmusk for bringing us together on this incredible journey. So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close as a friend of the team. Thank you all for the grind together." Four other xAI co-founders have departed since the company launched in 2023. The latest resignations come after Musk said last week that SpaceX had acquired xAI. In his announcement, the tech billionaire focused heavily on building out AI data centers in space. The AI company has also come under scrutiny over the past month, after its chatbot Grok produced thousands of sexualized images of women and children in response to user requests on X. The platform has since restricted image editing and generation tools but still faces several investigations.

Half of Elon Musk's xAI Founding Team Has Now Left the Company -- And the Timing Is Alarming

The X-odus is accelerating. Monday night, xAI co-founder Yuhuai (Tony) Wu announced he was leaving Elon Musk's company. Less than 24 hours later, co-founder Jimmy Ba also quit. Six members of the company's 12-person founding team have now left, with five departures coming in just the last year. The timing is terrible. With SpaceX's acquisition of xAI complete and an IPO pending in the coming months, the company faces more scrutiny than ever before. Musk is spinning up plans for orbital data centers, and the pressure to deliver is intense. If Grok can't keep pace with the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic, the IPO could easily suffer. The splits have been amicable, and there are good reasons founders might leave now -- everyone involved has a big windfall coming, and it's a great time to fundraise for AI startups. But the cumulative impact is alarming. There's a lot of work left to do at xAI, and the company needs to hold on to all the AI talent it can. Read More

Elon Musk Loses Half of xAI's Founding Team -- Where They've Gone Next

Founding engineers and researchers are leaving Elon Musk's xAI, underscoring the growing pains behind his bid to build a dominant A.I. company. Just days after Elon Musk merged his A.I. startup, xAI, with SpaceX in preparation for a widely anticipated trillion-dollar IPO later this year, two of xAI's founding employees -- Yuhuai (Tony) Wu and Jimmy Ba -- announced their resignations. That means half of xAI's founding team has now left the company barely three years after its launch. Musk framed the staff exodus as growing pains. "As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism. This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors," he wrote on X yesterday (Feb. 11). Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Wu and Ba's exits appeared amicable. But lower-level employees have been more candid about internal tensions at the Musk-run startup. Several members of xAI's technical staff have also left in recent weeks, according to their posts on X and LinkedIn. "All A.I. labs are building the exact same thing, and it's boring," said Vahid Kazemi, who worked on xAI's audio models, in a post on X. "I think there's room for more creativity. So, I'm starting something new." In an interview with NBC News, Kazemi also criticized the company's working culture, saying he regularly worked 12-hour days, including holidays and weekends. Launched in March 2023 with a roster of industry veterans from companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla, xAI will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. The new iteration of SpaceX faces no shortage of challenges: Grok continues to face legal scrutiny, while Musk's leadership style remains a point of contention. Here are the co-founders and notable leaders who have left xAI so far -- and where they are now. Jimmy Ba Jimmy Ba, who led A.I. safety at xAI, announced his exit on Feb. 10. A professor at the University of Toronto who studied under A.I. pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, Ba's research played a key role in shaping Grok's development. "So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close as a friend of the team," Ba wrote on X. He hasn't announced his next move, but added that "2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species." Despite Ba's departure, Dan Hendrycks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, remains a safety advisor for xAI. Yuhuai (Tony) Wu Tony Wu, a former research scientist at Google and postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, announced his departure from xAI on Feb. 9. Wu led xAI's reasoning team. "It's time for my next chapter...It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible," he wrote on X. Wu has not disclosed his next role. Co-founders Guodong Zhang and Manuel Kroiss remain at xAI and are helping lead the company's reorganization. Mike Liberatore While not a founding member, Mike Liberatore joined xAI as chief financial officer in April 2025, just one month after xAI acquired X in a deal that valued the combined company at $113 billion. Liberatore, formerly a finance executive at Airbnb and SquareTrade, left after only three months. He now works as a business finance officer at OpenAI, according to LinkedIn. Musk replaced Liberatore with ex-Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong. Armstrong advised Musk on his Twitter (now X) acquisition in 2022 and later served as a senior advisor at the Office of Personnel Management during Musk's controversial tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Greg Yang Greg Yang spent nearly six years as a researcher at Microsoft before joining xAI's founding team. He left the company in January due to health complications from Lyme disease. "Likely I contracted Lyme a long time ago, but until I pushed myself hard building xAI and weakened my immune system, the symptoms weren't noticeable," Yang wrote on X. He continues to advise xAI in an informal capacity. Igor Babuschkin Igor Babuschkin, a former research engineer at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, was a co-founder and key engineering lead at xAI. Widely known as the primary developer behind Grok, Babuschkin left in July 2025 to start his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, focused on A.I. research and startups. Christian Szegedy Christian Szegedy spent 12 years at Google before joining xAI as a founding research scientist. He left xAI in February 2025 to become chief scientist at superintelligence cloud company Morph Labs. More than a year later, he departed that role to found mathematical A.I. startup Math Inc. in September, according to his LinkedIn. "I left xAI in the last week of February and I am on good terms with the team. IMO, xAI has a bright future," Szegedy wrote on X. Other senior engineers and scientists at xAI include Yasemin Yesiltepe, Zhuoyi (Zoey) Huang and Yao Fu. Kyle Kosic Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in early 2023 after two years to co-found xAI, where he served as engineering infrastructure lead. He departed about a year later, in April 2024, to return to OpenAI as a technical staff member. Kosic was the first co-founder to leave xAI and did not issue a public statement. It is unclear who now leads xAI's engineering infrastructure, though another co-founder, Ross Nordeen, remains the company's technical program manager after previously holding the same role at Tesla.

Musk reorganises xAI after SpaceX merger and ahead of IPO - The Economic Times

Billionaire Elon Musk has overhauled the management of his artificial intelligence startup xAI ahead of a planned initial public offering that could rank among the largest ever, after merging the company with his rocket firm SpaceX.Billionaire Elon Musk has overhauled the management of his artificial intelligence startup xAI ahead of a planned initial public offering that could rank among the largest ever, after merging the company with his rocket firm SpaceX. The reorganisation announced on Wednesday follows the recent departures of several co-founders at the three-year-old AI company, leaving only half of the startup's original 12 cofounders and raising questions about stability as Musk pushes to compete with OpenAI and Google on ⁠all fronts. "We're ⁠organising because we've reached a certain scale. We're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale. Now, naturally, when this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages," Musk said at an xAI all-hands meeting, according to video footage posted by the company on X. The changes come after cofounders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba said in social media posts they had resigned this week from the AI firm they launched with Musk. Traffic on xAI's chatbot website Grok.com, while growing steadily, remains a distant third globally, accounting for about 3.4% of generative AI chatbot traffic, compared with 64.5% for ChatGPT and 21.5% ⁠for Google's Gemini, according to January data from Similarweb. 'Interstellar ambitions' During the all-hands meeting, Musk outlined plans to build a full-scale AI company competing in large language models, image and video generation systems and coding tools, as xAI seeks to catch up with rivals. ⁠He and other executives said the company is pushing to recruit talent, as competition for top AI researchers intensifies. "We are hiring, and we're looking for intelligent and smart people. This is not an easy place to work ... It's a grind, but we have, I guess, like interstellar ambitions," he said. Executives highlighted access to what they described as a 1 million Nvidia H100 GPU-equivalent training cluster as a draw for researchers, as well as longer-term plans that include launching SpaceX-supported orbital data centers at what Musk described as the 100- to 200-gigawatt-per-year level. SpaceX is preparing for one of the biggest IPOs ever after announcing last week it would purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance Musk's ambitions to put data centers in space. The company also pointed to rapid progress it has made in image and video generation models, saying xAI had created six times more images than Google's viral product Nano Banana. Its Grok chatbot has also faced criticism from many regulators ⁠and lawmakers around the world over the generation of explicit images. xAI has been reorganised into four main areas. Aman Madaan is expected to lead Grok's main model and voice initiatives, while Manuel Kroiss will head coding models, as well as machine learning infrastructure efforts. Cofounder Guodong Zhang will head xAI's Imagine team, focusing on multimedia, while Toby Pohlen will run the Macrohard team, which steers efforts to automate company processes. Executives described coding as a priority area, and Musk said he expects Grok Code to become "state of the art" within two to three months, in a competitive field where OpenAI and Anthropic are both investing heavily amid strong demand. "Things will move, maybe even by the end of this year, to where you don't even bother doing coding. The AI just creates the binary directly," Musk said.

Elon Musk Addresses xAI Exodus, Announces Reorganization: 'Unfortunately Required Parting Ways With Some People' - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

On Wednesday, Elon Musk said that his artificial intelligence company xAI has undergone a restructuring following a wave of co-founder departures. xAI Restructuring Follows Leadership Departures Musk took to X and said that the reorganization was designed "to improve speed of execution" and confirmed that the changes "required parting ways with some people." He did not specify how many employees were affected or whether the exits were voluntary. "We are hiring aggressively," Musk added, signaling that the company plans to rebuild even as it reshapes its structure. SpaceX-xAI Deal Reshapes Musk's Tech Empire The shake-up follows an all-stock transaction in which SpaceX acquired xAI. The deal reportedly values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion after the merger. xAI owns social media platform X and develops Grok, the company's AI chatbot and image generator. Last year, Musk used xAI in another all-stock deal to acquire X. Regulatory Scrutiny Over Grok Deepfake Concerns The restructuring also comes as xAI faces regulatory probes in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia. Authorities are examining whether Grok enabled the creation and distribution of non-consensual explicit deepfake images, including content allegedly involving minors. Photo Courtesy: gguy on Shutterstock.com Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Musk reorganizes xAI after SpaceX merger and ahead of blockbuster IPO

Billionaire Elon Musk has overhauled the management of his artificial intelligence startup xAI ahead of a planned initial public offering that could rank among the largest ever, after merging the company with his rocket firm SpaceX. The reorganization announced on Wednesday follows the recent departures of several co-founders at the three-year-old AI company, leaving only half of the startup's original 12 co-founders and raising questions about stability as Musk pushes to compete with OpenAI and Google on all fronts. "We're organizing because we've reached a certain scale. We're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale. Now, naturally, when this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages," Musk said at an xAI all-hands meeting, according to video footage posted ⁠by the company on X.

xAI co-founders Jimmu Ba & Yuhuai Wu joins exodus from Elon Musk's AI startup

Jimmy Ba is the sixth co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI to leave the company following tensions among the technical team, as the employees demand to improvement in models amid merger of AI startup with rocketmaker SpaceX. Jimmy Ba, co-founder and leader for research, safety and enterprise efforts in Musk's AI start-up, confirmed his departure on X, thanking the billionaire and said he would "continue to stay close as a friend of the team". "We are heading to an age of 100x productivity with the right tools. Recursive self improvement loops likely go live in the next 12mo. It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species," Ba wrote on X. His announcement comes hours after Tony Wu, who led xAI's reasoning team, became the fifth founder to leave, out of the 12-person group who launched the AI venture in 2023. "This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together," Wu said, announcing his resignation on X. "It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible," he added. As per an FT report, more than half a dozen other researchers have also left in recent weeks, taking a toll on the start-up's small technical team. Musk held a call with staff on Tuesday to discuss changes in its technical leadership, one of the people told FT. Some staff have complained xAI's leadership overpromised to Musk on technical developments as they race to catch up to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic, creating unreasonable demands on them, two sources said. Musk's recent announcement to sell xAI, which also owns the social media platform X, to his rocket group SpaceX to create a $1.5 trillion combined group has added to the internal turmoil. This plan reflects the billionaire's plans to launch a network of data-centre satellites to run advanced AI models from space. But the xAI-SpaceX combination is also expected to help Musk fund the AI startup's huge demand for capital to obtain chips, electricity and data centres to power its growth. This comes amid internet backlash with people blaming staff around the use of its models to generate explicit sexual content. MacroHard, xAI's agents and coding project in particular competes with powerful tools such as OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code. However, the system has fallen short of Musk's expectations. Musk has set lofty ambitions for MacroHard. "I'd be surprised if by the end of this year, the digital human emulation has not been solved," FT reported citing Musk in Dwarkesh Podcast last week. "I guess that's what we sort of mean by the MacroHard project. Can you do anything that a human with access to a computer could do?" The company's slate of AI "companions" -- such as its anime character Ani, which can engage in erotic conversations with users -- has also not delivered the engagement Musk expected, two people told FT, adding that Musk has been frustrated by the lack of growth in the amount of time users spend with these companions, despite new characters and resources dedicated to the products. The world's richest man has meanwhile been reviewing the performance of leadership and restructuring departments at xAI, believing some were underperforming, they said. As per the report, Manuel Kroiss, co-founder of xAI and former Google DeepMind engineer, has been promoted to help run its coding operations. The recent exodus from the tech team follow a number of big changes among xAI's top executives over the past year -- including general counsel Robert Keele, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino, chief financial officer Mike Liberatore, and head of product engineering Haofei Wang. As per reports, Musk has been introducing new financial leadership, naming former Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong as the chief financial officer in October and appointing Jonathan Shulkin, formerly a partner at xAI investor Valor Equity Partners, as the chief revenue officer. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Musk discusses interplanetary life, more, at xAI all-hands meeting amid founder turnover (X.AI:Private)

Elon Musk held an "all hands meeting" with xAI (X.AI) employees, as the generative artificial intelligence unit of SpaceX (SPACE) has seen considerable amounts of founder turnover. Among the topics discussed were artificial intelligence agents that will be able to Founder turnover has led to reorganization at xAI to improve execution speed, but suggests adjustment strain and could impact stability, although Musk frames it as a necessary evolution during rapid growth. Analysts cite strategic alignment of power, energy, and autonomy, suggesting the merger can enhance efficiencies and enable broader cross-company innovation. The SpaceX-xAI combination, valued at about $1.25T and preparing for IPO, presents investment opportunity driven by AI and space technology integration.

Elon Musk's xAI Loses Two More Co-Founders In 24 Hours -- Half Of The Original Founding Team Now Gone

The back-to-back exits mean six of the AI startup's 12 founding members have now departed as the company faces mounting pressure ahead of a potential IPO. Two Founders Announce Departures Within A Day After xAI co-founder Yuhuai "Tony" Wu said Monday night that he is leaving the Elon Musk-led artificial intelligence startup, another co-founder, Jimmy Ba also announced his own departure. In a post on X, Ba thanked Musk "for bringing us together on this incredible journey" and said he was proud of the team's work. The Financial Times reported that Ba left amid internal tensions over efforts to improve xAI's models as Musk races to catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic. Half Of xAI's Founding Team Has Departed With Wu and Ba's exits, six of the company's original 12 founding members have now left. Five of those departures occurred within the past year, including infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic, who joined OpenAI in 2024 and researcher Christian Szegedy, who exited in early 2025. Others have left to launch new ventures or cited personal reasons. The turnover comes as xAI prepares for heightened scrutiny tied to a potential initial public offering. Grok Challenges, IPO Pressure And The AI Race xAI's flagship chatbot, Grok, has faced criticism over erratic responses and controversy surrounding its image-generation tools, which have drawn legal and reputational scrutiny. Musk has also reportedly outlined ambitious expansion plans, including large-scale computing infrastructure projects, as competition intensifies against OpenAI and Anthropic. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo Courtesy: gguy on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Two cofounders of Elon Musk's xAI resign, joining exodus - The Economic Times

The Financial Times reported that Ba's resignation followed tensions within its technical team over demands to ⁠improve its AI model performance as Musk pushes to catch up to rivals ⁠such as OpenAI and Anthropic.xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba have resigned from the artificial intelligence firm they started with billionaire Elon Musk less than three years ago, they said in social media posts. The ⁠exits are ⁠the latest in an exodus from xAI that leaves the firm with half of its 12 co-founders. The Financial Times reported that Ba's resignation followed tensions within its technical team over demands to ⁠improve its AI model performance as Musk pushes to catch up to rivals ⁠such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Ba did not immediately respond to a request for comment via X messaging on the FT report. Ba and Wu did not say in their posts on X why they were resigning or detail their next plans, but thanked Musk. The latest changes at xAI come days after Musk's ⁠SpaceX said it will purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space.

Elon Musk Restructures xAI After Co-Founders Exit, Focuses Now on Chatbots, Coding & AI Agents

Elon Musk's xAI has stepped into a new phase. The company has changed its internal structure following the resignation of its two co-founders, Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, this week. Their exit reduced the original founding team from twelve to six members. The sudden change sparked talks about internal issues and leadership pressure. Elon Musk announced that xAI had already reorganized its teams. He said the goal is to improve speed and execution. Rapid growth forced the company to restructure. Musk added that xAI continues to hire new talent. will now work through four main divisions: The first division focuses on Grok AI. This includes the chatbot and voice products. Aman Madaan will lead this team. Grok AI remains the company's main consumer product. Musk also confirmed that Grok AI will not show ads. The second division handles Coding. Manuel Kroiss leads this team for building better AI systems and software tools. The group builds AI tools and improves technical systems. Musk wants this team to improve model performance quickly and stay ahead of the competition. The third division is Imagine. This unit works on video generation. Guodong Zhang heads this team. Musk said that real-time video will consume most of the in the future. The Imagine team aims to lead in this field. The fourth division is Macrohard, led by Toby Pohlen. It works as an AI software company run by digital agents. The team plans on automating complex software tasks.

Cofounder Yuhuai Tony Wu quits Musk-led AI startup xAI

Wu, who did not publicly attribute the exit to the company's merger with SpaceX, hinted at starting a "small team" of his own and thanked Musk "for the ride of a lifetime." xAI cofounder Yuhuai Tony Wu today announced his resignation from the AI startup company. The Elon Musk-owned startup was recently merged with SpaceX in a bid to fast-track the latter's public filing. "I resigned from xAI today. This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together," Wu wrote in a post on X. This is a critical announcement, given that this is the fifth exit of a cofounder. xAI was founded in March 2023, with Musk joined by 12 founding members. In June 2024, Kyle Kosic quit the company, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025, and Greg Yang and Wu this year. Wu has not publicly attributed the exit to the merger with SpaceX. Meanwhile, he hinted at starting a "small team" of his own and thanked Musk as well. "It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible. Elon - thank you for believing in the mission and for the ride of a lifetime," added Wu. Aside from the startup's merger with another Musk startup, recently, xAI opened a new engineering office in Washington, joining OpenAI in the Eastside AI corridor. The company now has offices in the Bay Area, Bellevue, and data centres in Memphis.

Musk reorganizes xAI after SpaceX merger and ahead of blockbuster IPO

Feb 11 (Reuters) - Elon Musk overhauled the management of his artificial intelligence startup xAI ahead of a planned initial public offering that could rank among the largest ever, after merging the company with his rocket firm SpaceX. The reorganization follows the recent departures of several co-founders at the three-year-old AI company, leaving only half of the startup's original 12 co-founders and raising questions about stability as Musk pushes to compete with OpenAI and Google on all fronts. "We're organizing because we've reached a certain scale. We're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale. Now, naturally, when this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages," Musk said at a company all-hands meeting posted on X. The changes come after co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba said in social media posts they had resigned from the AI firm they launched with Musk. 'INTERSTELLAR AMBITIONS' During the meeting, Musk outlined plans to build a full-scale AI company competing in large language models, image and video generation systems, and coding tools, as xAI seeks to catch up with rivals. He and other executives said the company is pushing to recruit talent, as competition for top AI researchers intensifies. "We are hiring, and we're looking for intelligent and smart people. This is not an easy place to work ... It's a grind, but we have, I guess, like interstellar ambitions," he said. Executives highlighted access to what they described as a 1 million GPU-equivalent training cluster as a draw for researchers, as well as longer-term plans that include launching SpaceX-supported orbital data centers at what Musk described as the 100- to 200-gigawatt-per-year level. SpaceX is preparing for one of the biggest IPOs ever after announcing last week it would purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space. The company also pointed to rapid progress it has made in image and video generation models, saying xAI had created six times more images than Google's viral product Nano Banana. Its technology has also faced criticism over the generation of explicit images. xAI has been reorganized into four main areas. Aman Madaan is expected to lead Grok's main model and voice initiatives, while Manuel Kroiss will head coding models, as well as machine learning infrastructure efforts. Co-founder Guodong Zhang will head xAI's Imagine team, focusing on multimedia, while Toby Pohlen will run the Macrohard team, which steers efforts to automate company processes. Executives described coding as a priority area, and Musk said he expects Grok Code to become "state of the art" within two to three months, in a competitive field where OpenAI and Anthropic are both investing heavily amid strong demand. "Things will move, maybe even by the end of this year, to where you don't even bother doing coding. The AI just creates the binary directly," Musk said. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona, Rod Nickel)

World's richest man Elon Musk's xAI loses two co-founders in two days - VnExpress International

Two co-founders of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI resigned less than 48 hours apart, days after the company was merged into aerospace company SpaceX. "It's time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species," influential researcher Jimmy Ba wrote on X on Tuesday. Ba is an assistant professor in the computer science department at the University of Toronto, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. there under Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the "godfather of AI," according to Business Insider. At xAI, Ba reported directly to Musk and ran a large portion of the company until late last year, when several of his responsibilities were divided between co-founders Tony Wu and Guodong Zhang. Ba's departure came just one day after Wu announced his exit from xAI on Monday, less than three years after joining the company. "It's time for my next chapter," Wu said Monday in a post on X, where he also thanked Musk. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible." He did not say in the statement what he would be doing next. Musk founded xAI on July 12, 2023, with 12 senior leaders drawn from companies including Google, Microsoft and Tesla. In under three years, half have left. Besides Ba and Wu, other co-founders, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, have also departed Musk's AI venture, according to CNBC. Bloomberg reported that the recent departures may be linked to Musk's strategic direction, which some co-founders were reportedly dissatisfied with. Most recently, Musk merged xAI into SpaceX as part of a plan to develop data centers in space.

Two co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI resign, joining exodus

Feb 10 (Reuters) - xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba have resigned from the artificial intelligence firm they started with billionaire Elon Musk less than three years ago, they said in social media posts. The exits are the latest in an exodus from xAI that leaves the firm with half of its 12 co-founders. The Financial Times reported that Ba's resignation followed tensions within its technical team over demands to improve its AI model performance as Musk pushes to catch up to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Ba did not immediately respond to a request for comment via X messaging on the FT report. Ba and Wu did not say in their posts on X why they were resigning or detail their next plans, but thanked Musk. The latest changes at xAI come days after Musk's SpaceX said it will purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space. (Reporting by Natalia Bueno Rebolledo and Chris Thomas in Mexico City; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)