Musk's xAI sees 2 co-founders depart within hours
What's the story
Jimmy Ba, one of the key co-founders of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) start-up xAI, has announced his departure from the company. This comes after Tony Wu, another co-founder who led the reasoning team at xAI, also left. Ba's exit comes just hours after Wu's resignation announcement on social media platform X. "This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever," Wu said while announcing his resignation.
Leadership shakeup
More than half a dozen researchers have also left
The departures of Ba and Wu add to the growing list of exits from xAI's technical team. Over half a dozen researchers have also left in recent weeks, according to a Financial Times report. The exodus has raised concerns about the start-up's ability to meet its ambitious goals and user engagement expectations. Some staff members have even accused xAI's leadership of overpromising on technical developments while racing against rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Merger strategy
Musk's plan to sell xAI to SpaceX adds to turmoil
Musk's plan to sell xAI, which also owns social media platform X, to his rocket company SpaceX has added to the internal turmoil. The merger is part of Musk's vision to create a $1.5 trillion combined group and launch a network of data-center satellites to run advanced AI models from space. However, it is also expected to help fund xAI's capital-intensive operations such as obtaining chips, electricity, and data centers for growth.
Project performance
xAI's 'companions' not meeting Musk's engagement expectations
xAI's AI "companions," including an anime character named Ani that can have erotic conversations with users, have not met Musk's engagement expectations. Despite new characters and resources dedicated to these products, the amount of time users spend with them has not increased as hoped. This has frustrated Musk who has been reviewing leadership performance and restructuring departments at xAI due to perceived underperformance.
New leadership
Manuel Kroiss promoted amid series of changes at xAI
Manuel Kroiss, co-founder of xAI and former Google DeepMind engineer, has been promoted to help run the company's coding operations. This comes amid a series of major changes among xAI's top executives over the past year. These include general counsel Robert Keele, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, CFO Mike Liberatore and head of product engineering Haofei Wang.