Elon Musk Implies xAI Staff Were Pushed Out, Not Poached

Elon Musk is currently addressing a notable exodus of talent from his artificial intelligence venture, xAI. This week alone saw two additional co-founders depart, bringing the total to six out of the original twelve founding members who have now left the company.

During an all-hands meeting held on Tuesday evening, Musk suggested that these departures were primarily a matter of organizational fit rather than individual performance. As reported by The New York Times, he stated, "Because we’ve reached a certain scale, we’re organizing the company to be more effective at this scale. And actually, when this happens, there’s some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages.”

Musk elaborated further on Wednesday afternoon via X, clarifying that these exits were not voluntary. He wrote, “xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism. This unfortunately required parting ways with some people.”

He also announced that xAI is "hiring aggressively," concluding with a characteristic pitch: “Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you.”

The departure of half of xAI's co-founders in a relatively short timeframe inevitably raises questions. Musk's public statements appear strategically crafted to shape the narrative, portraying these exits as necessary organizational adjustments for growth rather than setbacks for the company.

In total, at least eleven engineers, including the two co-founders, have publicly announced their resignations from xAI within the past week, although two of these departures reportedly occurred a few weeks prior to their public disclosure.

Among the departing staff, three have indicated intentions to launch new ventures alongside other former xAI engineers, though specific details about these new companies remain undisclosed. Other former employees have alluded to a desire for greater autonomy and the agility of smaller teams to accelerate the development of frontier technology, anticipating a significant surge in AI productivity.

Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, a co-founder and reasoning lead at xAI, shared in his resignation announcement, “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.”

Shayan Salehian, who contributed to product infrastructure and model behavior post-training at xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, announced last week his departure to “start something new.”

Vahid Kazemi, who had a brief tenure focusing on machine learning, posted on Tuesday that he had left a few weeks ago, remarking, “IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it’s boring … So, I’m starting something new.”

Roland Gavrilescu, a former xAI engineer who initially left in November to found Nuraline, a company developing "forward-deployed AI agents," posted again on Tuesday that he had subsequently left Nuraline to build “something new with others that left xAI.”

These internal shifts at xAI coincide with a period of significant external challenges for the company. xAI is currently under regulatory scrutiny following instances where its Grok AI generated nonconsensual explicit deepfakes of women and children, which were subsequently circulated on X. French authorities, as part of an ongoing investigation, conducted a raid on X offices last week. Simultaneously, xAI is preparing for a planned IPO later this year, following its recent legal acquisition by SpaceX.

Elon Musk is also facing personal controversy, as documents published by the Justice Department reveal extensive communications with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. These emails indicate Musk discussed visiting Epstein’s island on two separate occasions in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008.

With a headcount exceeding 1,000 employees, these departures are unlikely to significantly impact xAI's short-term operational capabilities. However, the rapid succession of exits has garnered considerable attention online, with users humorously announcing their own "departures from xAI" despite never having worked there, illustrating how quickly the narrative of a "mass exodus" gained traction on Musk’s social network.

Nevertheless, forced exits of co-founders are rarely indicative of a smooth scaling process. While Musk frames the reorganization as a calculated strategic move, the fact that several engineers followed the co-founders out the door—and that at least three are collaborating on new ventures—suggests these departures may also reflect deeper underlying tensions. In the highly competitive and talent-scarce field of frontier AI, where reputation is paramount, xAI’s ability to attract and retain top researchers will be rigorously tested as it competes with industry leaders such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for further comment and information.

The following employees have publicly announced their departures from xAI on X in recent days:

February 6: Ayush Jaiswal, an engineer, wrote: “This was my last week at xAI. Will be taking a few months to spend time with family & tinker with AI.”

February 7: Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training and was previously at X, wrote: “I left xAI to start something new, closing my 7+ year chapter working at Twitter, X, and xAI with so much gratitude.” He additionally noted that working closely with Elon Musk instilled in him “obsessive attention to detail, maniacal urgency, and to think from first principles.”

February 9: Simon Zhai, a Member of Technical Staff (MTS), wrote: “Today is my last day at xAI, feeling very fortunate about the opportunity. It has been an amazing journey.”

February 9: Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, a co-founder and reasoning lead, wrote: “I resigned from xAI today. 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.”

February 10: Jimmy Ba, a co-founder and research/safety lead, wrote: “Last day at xAI. We are heading to an age of 100x productivity with the right tools. Recursive self improvement loops likely go live in the next 12 months. 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.”

February 10: Vahid Kazemi, an ML PhD, stated that he had left xAI “a few weeks ago,” adding: “IMO, all AI labs are building the exact same thing, and it’s boring. I think there’s room for more creativity. So, I’m starting something new.”

February 10: Hang Gao, who contributed to multimodal efforts including Grok Imagine, wrote: “I left xAI today.” He described his tenure as “truly rewarding,” highlighting his contributions to Grok Imagine’s releases and commending the team’s “humble craftsmanship and ambitious vision.”

February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, the engineer who departed in November to establish Nuraline, posted: “I left xAI. Building something new with others that left xAI. We’re hiring :)”

February 10: Chace Lee, a founding member of Macrohard, wrote: “Taking a brief reset, then back to the frontier.” (Macrohard is an AI-only software venture under xAI, aimed at fully automating software development, coding, and operations using Grok-powered, multi-agent systems; its name is a playful reference to Microsoft.)

February 11: Andrew Ma, who had been with xAI since X was known as Twitter, focused on app and recommendation model improvements, including “the X video feed, search bar, user modeling, starter-packs and the home feed model.” He wrote: “I’m excited about the future- not sure what I’ll be doing yet (my DMs are open), but there is a world to be changed and no time to waste. Go team, stay focused, be energized, I can’t wait to see you all on the moon and beyond, believe me when I say there is no one that I trust more on the entire planet to get there, there is a world to win.”

February 12: Radhakrishnan (Rad) Venkataramani, who worked on reasoning and reinforcement learning systems for Grok, wrote: “The last 8 months in RL systems/SWE-RL team pushing our coding model to be SOTA and toward recursive self improvement, will always be the most memorable of my lifetime…We’re at an inflection point where intelligence begins accelerating itself, and from here the trajectory only goes vertical.”