tech
February 10, 2026
Nearly half of xAI's founding team has now left the company
Out of the twelve-person founding team, only seven are still at the company (counting Elon).
TL;DR
- Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, co-founder of xAI, announced his departure.
- This marks the fifth departure from xAI's twelve-person founding team, with four leaving in the last year.
- Previous departures include Kyle Kosic, Christian Szegedy, Igor Babushkin, and Greg Yang.
- Reasons for departure may include amicable splits due to financial windfalls from an impending IPO or opportunities to start new ventures.
- Potential less amicable reasons include issues with the Grok chatbot and the deepfake pornography incident with image-generation tools.
- The cumulative impact of these departures is alarming as xAI faces significant work and increased scrutiny with its IPO.
- The company needs to retain AI talent to keep pace with competitors and ensure the IPO's success.
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