According to 1M AI News monitoring, xAI co-founder Manuel Kroiss has informed colleagues of his upcoming departure. Kroiss previously led model pretraining at xAI, reporting directly to Elon Musk, and had worked at Google and DeepMind before joining. His departure reduces the number of original co-founders from 11 to 1, with only Ross Nordeen from Tesla remaining. Since January this year, Guodong Zhang, Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang have all left.
Elon Musk admitted at the Abundance Summit this month that xAI “lags behind competitors in programming capabilities,” and on X he stated, “xAI was built the wrong way for the first time, and we are rebuilding from the ground up,” adding that the company is re-evaluating past rejected job applicants. He is personally overseeing dozens of direct reports, recruiting from Tesla and SpaceX, while also laying off dozens of current employees.
This restructuring follows SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI earlier this year. SpaceX is expected to file for an IPO this year, with a valuation potentially reaching $1.5 trillion.