Elon Musk is dealing with a wave of departures from xAI, including two more co-founders who left this week, bringing the total to six from the original 12.
At yesterday’s all-hands meeting, Musk suggested that outputs should be about fit, not performance. “Because we’ve reached a certain scale, we’re organizing the company to be more efficient at that scale,” he said, according to The New York Times. “And in fact, when that happens, there are some people who are better suited to the early stages of society and less suited to the later stages.”
On Wednesday X afternoon, he went further and made it clear that these departures were not voluntary. “xAI was reorganized a few days ago to increase execution speed,” Musk wrote. “As a company grows, especially as fast as xAI, the structure must evolve like any living organism. Unfortunately, this necessitated parting ways with some people.”
He added that the company is “recruiting aggressively” and concluded with a typical Musk: “Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the moon appeals to you.”
Losing half of its co-founders in a relatively short period of time raises questions, and Musk’s comments seem designed to dominate the narrative and reframe the exits as strategic rather than a problem for the outfit.
In total, at least nine engineers, including two co-founders, have publicly announced their departures from xAI in the past week — though two of those departures appear to have happened several weeks ago.
Three of the departing employees said they will start something new with other former xAI engineers, though no details about the new venture are available. Others have indicated a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams to build frontier technologies more quickly, pointing to the expected increase in AI productivity.
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Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, xAI co-founder and thought leader, said in a post announcing his resignation: “It’s time for my next chapter. It’s an era of possibilities: a small team armed with artificial intelligence can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”
Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior after training at xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, said last week that he was leaving to “start something new.”
Vahid Kazemi, who worked briefly in machine learning, posted on Tuesday that he had 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 found Nuraline, which builds “pre-deployed AI agents,” but re-posted on Tuesday that he had left the company to build “something new with others who left xAI.”
The departures come at a time of significant controversy for xAI. The company is facing regulatory scrutiny after Grok created non-consensual explicit fake news about women and children that was spread on X – French authorities raided X’s offices last week as part of an investigation. The company is also heading for a planned IPO later this year after being legally acquired by SpaceX last week.
Musk also faces personal controversy after files released by the Justice Department show lengthy conversations with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Emails show Musk discussed visiting Epstein’s island on two separate occasions, in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008.
xAI has more than 1,000 employees, so the departures are unlikely to affect the company’s short-term capabilities. Still, the rapid pace of recent departures has taken on an online life of its own, with users making humorous announcements
Still, forced co-founder departures are rarely a sign of smooth scaling. As Musk calculates the reorganization, the fact that several engineers have followed co-founders out the door—and that at least three are starting something new together—suggests that 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 asked xAI for more information.
Departure Notification Timeline
The following employees have publicly announced their departure from xAI to X in recent days:
February 6: Ayush Jaiswal, an engineer, wrote: “This was my last week at xAI. It will be a few months before I spend time with my family and play around with AI.”
February 7: Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior after training and was previously at X, wrote: “I’m leaving xAI to start something new, closing my 7+ year chapter at Twitter, X and xAI with such gratitude.” He added that working closely with Elon Musk taught him “obsessive attention to detail, maniacal urgency and first-principles thinking.”
February 9: Simon Zhai, MTS (Member of Technical Staff), wrote: “Today is my last day at xAI, I am very lucky for this opportunity. It has been an amazing journey.”
February 9: Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, co-founder and thought leader, wrote: “Today I resigned from xAI. It’s time for my next chapter. It’s an era of full possibilities: a small team armed with AI can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”
February 10: Jimmy Ba, co-founder and head of research/security, wrote: “Last day at xAI. With the right tools, we’re headed for an age of 100x productivity. Recursive self-improvement loops will likely start working in the next 12 months. Time to recalibrate my gradient to the big picture. 2026 will be crazy and probably the busiest year for our species.”
February 10: Vahid Kazemi, ML PhD, wrote that he 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 has 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 releases and praising the team’s “humble craft and ambitious vision”.
February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, an engineer who left in November to found Nuraline, wrote: “I left xAI. I’m building something new with others who left xAI. We’re hiring :)”
February 10: Chace Lee, a member of the founding Macrohard team, wrote: “Brief reset and then back to the frontier.” (Macrohard is an AI-only software business under xAI designed to fully automate software development, coding and operations using multi-agent systems powered by Grok. Its name is a dig at Microsoft.)
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