TL;DR

Influential researcher Jimmy Ba has become the sixth of xAI’s 12 co-founders to leave the company, following another departure the day before. The exits come amid reported internal turmoil following xAI’s acquisition by SpaceX and concerns about unrealistic technical demands.

A wave of departures

Ba, a University of Toronto professor credited with critical research for xAI’s Grok version 4 AI model, announced his departure on social media. His exit came one day after co-founder Tony Wu also left the company.

Beyond the co-founder departures, more than half a dozen other researchers have left in recent weeks, according to the Financial Times. Elon Musk reportedly held a call with staff to discuss changes to the company’s technical leadership.

Internal pressures

Staff have reportedly complained that leadership over-promised to Musk on technical developments, leading to unreasonable demands. The sale to SpaceX — creating a combined entity valued at $1.2 trillion — and public controversy around explicit Grok-generated content have added to internal difficulties.

Two key projects, MacroHard (xAI’s coding and agents tool) and its AI “companions” product, have reportedly not met Musk’s expectations, prompting him to review leadership performance and restructure departments.

Looking forward

The departures raise questions about xAI’s ability to retain the technical talent needed to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. With SpaceX planning an IPO later this year, the pressure on xAI’s remaining team is unlikely to ease.