xAI loses all co‑founders
Elon Musk’s xAI has now seen all 11 of its cofounders depart, with eight leaving since January — a level of churn that flags serious instability at a celebrity‑led AI startup. The exits coincide with Musk’s SpaceX IPO planning and suggest shifting leadership and hiring dynamics for anyone considering roles there. (businessinsider.com)
Manuel Kroiss — who led xAI’s pretraining team and reported directly to Elon Musk — told colleagues he was leaving the company in late March 2026. (businessinsider.com) (businessinsider.com) Ross Nordeen, described by reports as Musk’s “right‑hand operator” who came to xAI from Tesla and helped plan workforce moves after Musk’s 2022 Twitter acquisition, exited on March 28, 2026, and observers noted his employee badge on X was removed. (businessinsider.com) (businessinsider.com) Earlier departures this month included Guodong Zhang — who led xAI projects Grok Code and Grok Imagine — and researchers Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony (Yuhuai) Wu and Greg Yang, several of whom left between January and March 2026. (businessinsider.com) (africa.businessinsider.com) SpaceX’s February 2026 deal that folded xAI into Musk’s rocket company valued xAI at about $250 billion and placed the merged entity at roughly $1.25 trillion on deal documents seen by Bloomberg and CNBC. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) Elon Musk posted on X that “xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” comments he made publicly as the company reorganized after the February merger and ahead of SpaceX’s IPO planning. (bloomberg.com) (bloomberg.com) Reporting by TechCrunch and others says SpaceX and Tesla executives have been involved in internal evaluations at xAI during the reshuffle and that the company has been recruiting new talent while winding down some teams and projects. (techcrunch.com) (techcrunch.com) Public filings and advisor notices tied to the February transaction list xAI’s recent infrastructure investments — including the Colossus supercomputers and product launches like Grok 4, Grok Voice and Grok Imagine in 2025 — assets that factored into the $250 billion valuation. (sullcrom.com) (sullcrom.com)
