Co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI resigned: Here's Why

A recent news update has left everyone surprised at how the world's most popular platform, 'xAI,' has seen turnovers from the founding team in shortest time spend.

In a bold move, the sixth co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI is leaving the company following tensions among its technical team over demands to improve its models soon after the billionaire merges the AI start-up with rocket maker SpaceX.

One of xAI's co-founders, Jimmy Ba, who has led research, safety, and enterprise efforts for Musk's AI start-up, confirmed his departure on X after the Financial Times contacted him regarding his planned exit.

His move comes after Tony Wu, who led xAI’s reasoning team, on Monday became the fifth founder to leave—out of the 12-person group who launched the company in 2023.

According to social media posts and tech analysts, taking a toll on the start-up’s small technical team, more than half a dozen other researchers have also left in recent weeks.

A source informed that Musk held a call with staff on Tuesday, February 10, 2026, to discuss changes in its technical leadership.

Elon Musk's xAI-SpaceX merger: What does it mean for the group's position and future goals?

Musk’s recent move to sell xAI, which owns the social media platform X, to his rocket group SpaceX to create a $1.5tn combined group has added to the internal turmoil.

Grok xAI faces global scrutiny over "explicit content": How it affected the group's leadership

XAI has been in the news for the past few months after the platform allowed its users to generate obscene images and adult content without consent.

In relation to that, the staff has faced backlash from the public around the use of its models to generate explicit sexual content and has had to navigate Musk’s relentless demands.

High demands and non-achievable goals fueled major turnovers:

Musk has set lofty ambitions for MacroHard. “I’d be surprised if by the end of this year, the digital human emulation has not been solved,” he told the Dwarkesh Podcast last week. “I guess that’s what we sort of mean by the MacroHard project. Can you do anything that a human with access to a computer could do?”

MacroHard, xAI’s agents, and the coding project in particular have fallen short of Musk’s expectations as the system competes with powerful tools such as OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code.

As per internal sources, the company’s slate of AI “companions”—such as its anime character Ani, which can engage in erotic conversations with users—has also not delivered the engagement Musk expected.

Musk has been frustrated by the lack of growth in the amount of time users spend with these companions, despite new characters and resources dedicated to the products.

The world’s richest man has meanwhile been reviewing the performance of leadership and restructuring departments at xAI, believing some were underperforming.

Manuel Kroiss, co-founder of xAI and former Google DeepMind engineer, has been promoted to help run its coding operations.

Musk’s deal to combine SpaceX with the AI start-up, announced last week, reflects the billionaire’s plans 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 fund xAI’s huge demand for capital to obtain chips, electricity, and data centers to power its growth.

Rolling xAI into the rocket group adds to the pressure on the AI start-up’s staff, as Musk intends to take the combined group public as early as June.

Global backlash:

This year, xAI’s Grok has come under scrutiny from governments globally after requests for AI-generated non-consensual sexual imagery of women and children flooded the platform.

Last summer, xAI made changes to the chatbot after it praised Hitler and made antisemitic posts on X.

At the same time, Musk has been under pressure to generate revenue from the AI business to fund costly infrastructure.

Musk's new leadership plan:

The recent departures from the tech team also follow a number of big changes among xAI’s top executives over the past year—including general counsel Robert Keele, chief financial officer Mike Liberatore, and head of product engineering Haofei Wang.

Furthermore, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino also departed in July 2025 and has not been replaced.

Musk has been introducing new financial leadership, naming former Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong as the chief financial officer in October and appointing Jonathan Shulkin, formerly a partner at xAI investor Valor Equity Partners, as the chief revenue officer.