Inc. Magazine
Six of the 11 co founders of xAI have left as tensions rise over Grok development. After SpaceX acquired the firm, reports cite pressure to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic.
People Keep Leaving xAI. Some Are Now Building Advanced AI That Can Improve Itself
Author: Ben Sherry
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 co-founders 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 February 9, xAI co-founder 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 co-founder 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.
Credits: TCA, LLC.