Monday night time, xAI co-founder Yuhuai (Tony) Wu introduced he was leaving the corporate. “It’s time for my subsequent chapter,” Wu wrote in a late-night post on X. “It’s an period with full prospects: a small crew armed with AIs can transfer mountains and redefine what’s doable.”
Lower than a day later, on Tuesday afternoon, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who reported on to Musk, stated that he, too, is bouncing, posting a gracious notice on X on his manner out. “Monumental because of @elonmusk for bringing us collectively on this unimaginable journey. So pleased with what the xAI crew has carried out and can proceed to remain shut as a good friend of the crew,” it read in part.
On their very own, each have been fairly normal tech departure bulletins — however they’re a part of a troubling sample for the lab. Six members of the company’s 12-person founding team have now left the corporate, with 5 of the departures coming in simply the final 12 months. Infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic left for OpenAI in mid-2024, adopted by Google veteran Christian Szegedy in February 2025. This previous August, Igor Babuschkin left to found a venture firm, and Microsoft alum Greg Yang departed simply final month, citing health issues.
By all accounts, the splits have all been amicable, and there are many the explanation why, almost three years in, some founders would possibly determine to maneuver on. Elon Musk is a notoriously demanding boss, and with the SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI full and an IPO pending within the coming months, everybody concerned has a reasonably large windfall coming. It’s a good time to be fundraising for an AI startup, so it’s solely pure for high-level researchers to need to strike out on their very own.
There are additionally much less amicable causes that may think about. The corporate’s flagship product, the Grok chatbot, has struggled with bizarre behavior and apparent internal tampering — the type of factor that may simply create friction on the technical crew. Then there have been the current modifications to xAI’s image-generation instruments that flooded the platform with deepfake pornography, sparking slow-moving however actual legal consequences.
Regardless of the trigger, the cumulative influence is alarming. There’s a whole lot of work left to do at xAI, and an IPO will convey extra scrutiny than the lab has ever confronted earlier than. With Musk already spinning up plans for orbital information facilities, the stress to make good on these plans will likely be intense. The tempo of mannequin improvement isn’t slowing down, and if Grok can’t hold tempo with the most recent fashions from OpenAI and Anthropic, the IPO may simply endure.
In brief, the stakes are excessive, and xAI wants to carry on to all of the AI expertise it may possibly.
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June 23, 2026
