Synopsis
xAI has seen a wave of cofounder exits this year as the company undergoes major internal changes and restructuring. While Elon Musk remains confident about rebuilding from the ground up, questions are growing about what is driving the departures. Here’s a closer look at what’s happening inside the company.But the company CEO appears unperturbed. He has a simple explanation. “xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up. Same thing happened with Tesla," he said in an X post last month.
It is an unusual and surprising admission, especially from a founder not known for taking criticism kindly (at least in public), and it comes as xAI works to regain stability after a wave of departures.
The exits
xAI has lost eight cofounders since January, including Manuel Kroiss, Ross Nordeen, Guodong Zhang, Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang. Kroiss and Nordeen were the last to leave.
Most departures began shortly after SpaceX’s merger with xAI ahead of what could become one of the biggest IPOs in history.
In February, Musk reorganised xAI and introduced a new structure. Since then, several leaders overseeing key products, ranging from coding tools to image generation, have also left the company.
