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The sixth co-founder of Elon Musk’s
Jimmy Bae, who has led research, security and enterprise efforts for Musk’s AI start-up, confirmed his departure at X after being contacted by the FT regarding his planned exit. Ba thanked Musk and said he would “remain close as a friend of the team”.
His move comes after Tony Wu, who led XAI’s reasoning team, became the fifth founder to leave on Monday – out of the 12-person group that launched the company in 2023.
More than a half-dozen other researchers have also left in recent weeks, according to social media posts and people familiar with the matter, taking a toll on the start-up’s small technical team.
Musk spoke with employees on Tuesday to discuss changes in his tech leadership, one of the people said.
Some employees have complained that XAI’s leadership has overpromised Musk on technology development as they race to overtake rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, creating unreasonable demands on them, the two people said.
Social media platforms to form $1.5tn combined conglomerate
The staff has faced public backlash over the use of their models to produce sexually explicit material and have had to heed Musk’s persistent demands.
Macrohards, particularly XAI’s agents and coding projects, have fallen short of Musk’s expectations. The system competes with powerful tools like OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Cloud Code.
Musk has set high ambitions for Macrohard. “I would be surprised if digital human simulation isn’t solved by the end of this year,” he told the Dwarkesh Podcast. last week. “I think that’s what we mean by a macrohard project. Can you do anything that a human being with access to a computer can do?”
The company’s list of AI “companions” — such as its anime character Annie, who can engage in erotic conversations with users — haven’t delivered the engagement Musk had hoped for, the two people said.
He said Musk is frustrated by the lack of increase in time users spend with these companions, despite new characters and resources dedicated to the products.
The world’s richest man is meanwhile reviewing the performance of leadership and restructuring departments at XAI, saying some he believes are underperforming, the two people said.
XAI co-founder and former Google DeepMind engineer Manuel Croix has been promoted to help run its coding operations, he said.
Musk’s deal to combine SpaceX with the AI start-up, announced last week, reflects the billionaire’s plan to launch a network of data-center satellites to run advanced AI models from space.
But the combination with SpaceX is also expected to help Musk meet xAI’s huge demand for capital to get the chips, electricity and data centers to power its development.
The addition of XAI to Rocket Group increases pressure on the AI start-up’s staff as Musk intends to take the combined group public as early as June.
This year, XAI’s Grok has come under scrutiny from governments globally after the platform was flooded with requests for AI-generated non-consensual sexual images of women and children. Last summer, XAI made changes to the chatbot after someone praised Hitler and made anti-Semitic posts on X.
At the same time, Musk has been under pressure to generate revenue from the AI business to finance the expensive infrastructure.
The recent departures from the tech team follow several major changes among XAI’s top executives over the past year — including general counsel Robert Keel, chief financial officer Mike Liberatore and head of product engineering Haofei Wang. X’s chief executive Linda Yaccarino also left in July and has not been replaced.
Musk is ushering in new financial leadership, naming former Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong as chief financial officer in October and Jonathan Shulkin, previously a partner at XAI investor Valor Equity Partners, as chief revenue officer.
Additional reporting by George Hammond and Stephen Morris
