A wave of departures is beginning to take shape inside Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, as two co-founders leave the firm just hours apart.
xAI co-founder Yuhuai “Tony” Wu says he has resigned from the company, marking the latest exit among the founding team as the AI lab matures.
“I resigned from xAI today.
This company – and the family we became – will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the war rooms, and all those battles we have fought together.
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.”
Hours later, fellow xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba announced on X his last day at the AI startup.
“xAI’s mission is to push humanity up the Kardashev tech tree. Grateful to have helped co-found at the start. And enormous thanks to Elon Musk for bringing us together on this incredible journey…
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.”
On top of Wu and Ba, among those who have departed xAI are Kyle Kosic in June 2024, Igor Babuschkin in August 2025, Christian Szegedy in February 2025 and Greg Yang in January 2026.
The string of exits does not necessarily signal operational trouble, but it does highlight a broader pattern seen across fast-moving AI labs, where early builders often leave once the company shifts from scrappy experimentation to large-scale execution.
Earlier this month, SpaceX merged with xAI in a $250 billion acquisition. In 2023, Musk founded xAI, which is popular for developing the generative AI chatbot Grok.
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