Musk reshuffles xAI as founding team halves after exits
What's the story
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has announced a major reorganization at his artificial intelligence start-up, xAI. The move comes after the recent departures of several co-founders from the three-year-old company. Now, only six out of the original 12 co-founders remain. The changes come as SpaceX prepares for a potential IPO later this year and amid regulatory scrutiny over xAI's Grok chatbot and image generator capabilities.
Strategic shift
Musk's vision for xAI
Musk envisions a full-fledged AI company that competes in large language models, image and video generation systems, and coding tools. He said, "We're organizing because we've reached a certain scale. We're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale." The restructuring comes after co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba announced their resignations from the AI firm they started with Musk.
Competitive landscape
Grok.com lags behind competitors in generative AI chatbot traffic
Despite steady growth, xAI's chatbot website Grok.com lags behind competitors in the global market. It accounts for about 3.4% of generative AI chatbot traffic, compared to ChatGPT's 64.5% and Google's Gemini at 21.5%. During an all-hands meeting, Musk emphasized the company's ambition to recruit top talent amid intensifying competition for skilled AI researchers.
New structure
New leadership appointments at xAI
xAI has been reorganized into four main areas with new leadership appointments. Aman Madaan will lead Grok's main model and voice initiatives, while Manuel Kroiss will head coding models and machine learning infrastructure efforts. Co-founder Guodong Zhang will lead the Imagine team focusing on multimedia, while Toby Pohlen will run the Macrohard team automating company processes.