xAI co-founder quits to launch an AI safety firm
What's the story
Igor Babuschkin, the co-founder of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) start-up xAI, has announced his departure from the company. He will be launching an investment firm focused on AI safety research. Babuschkin's exit follows other recent executive departures at xAI and Tesla. His new venture, Babuschkin Ventures, will focus on funding AI safety research and start-ups working on the technology.
New beginnings
Babuschkin talks about xAI's early days
Babuschkin has previously worked at Google's DeepMind and OpenAI. In his post announcing his departure, he spoke about xAI's early days of building infrastructure and models. "I created many of the foundational tools for launching and managing training jobs," he said while recalling his time overseeing engineering across infrastructure, product, and applied AI projects at xAI.
Market dynamics
Musk faces executive exits at both xAI, Tesla
Babuschkin's exit comes as the AI industry heats up with players like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic investing heavily in training and deploying advanced systems. His departure also follows that of xAI's legal head, Robert Keele, earlier this month. The shake-up at xAI comes as Musk is also facing executive exits at Tesla.
Information
Scandals surrounding Grok chatbot
Babuschkin, who helped build xAI into a leading AI model developer in Silicon Valley, is leaving the company after a series of scandals involving AI chatbot Grok. These controversies have at times overshadowed the performance of xAI's models, which have been competitive in the industry.