Earlier this month, all but two of the 11 co-founders of Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI appeared to have left the company. Now, according to Business Insider, the remaining two co-founders, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have also left.
BI said Nordeen reported leaving the company on Friday after Kroiss told people on Wednesday that he would be leaving xAI.
Musk recently claimed that xAI “wasn’t built right the first time” and is now “being built from the ground up.” The company was recently acquired by Musk’s SpaceX, uniting SpaceX, xAI, and X (formerly Twitter) under one corporate umbrella, with SpaceX reportedly planning to take them all public.
According to BI, both Kroiss and Nordeen reported directly to Musk, with Kroiss leading the company’s pre-training team and Nordeen being Musk’s “right-hand operator.” Nordeen came to xAI from Tesla and is said to have been involved in plans for large-scale layoffs at Twitter after Musk acquired xAI in 2022.
TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for comment.
