tech
March 28, 2026
All 11 xAI co-founders have now left Elon Musk's AI company
Every co-founder Elon Musk recruited to build xAI has now reportedly left the company. Manuel Kroiss, who led the pretraining team, told people this month that he was departing. Ross Nordeen, described by Business Insider as Musk’s “right-hand operator,” left on Friday. They were the last two of eleven co-founders, all of whom have exited a company that was valued at $250 billion when SpaceX acquired it in February and that Musk himself described two weeks ago as having been “not built right the first time around.”
TL;DR
- All eleven co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI have reportedly left the company.
- Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen were the last two co-founders to depart.
- xAI was acquired by SpaceX in February for $250 billion.
- Elon Musk recently stated that xAI was 'not built right the first time around' and needed to be rebuilt.
- The departing researchers were highly accomplished in the field of artificial intelligence.
- Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI, leading to a shareholder lawsuit against Musk.
- Musk's admission of product non-competitiveness validated the co-founders' decisions to leave.
- The AI talent market is highly competitive, with other major companies aggressively hiring researchers.
- Despite assets like the Colossus supercomputer and Grok chatbot, the departure of research leadership poses a significant challenge.
- The exodus follows a pattern seen in Musk's other companies, suggesting a management style that struggles in research-driven fields.
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