At least nine engineers, including two co-founders, publicly announced their departure from xAI last week. Two of them appear to have left a few weeks ago.
Neither xAI nor Elon Musk has commented publicly on their departure.
Churn is common in startups, but the departure of co-founders is much less common. Now more than half of xAI’s founding team has left, with several others following within days, increasing scrutiny on the company’s stability.
Three of the departing employees said they would start something new with former xAI engineers, but no details were provided about the new venture. Others point to the expected surge in AI productivity, hinting at a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams to build cutting-edge technologies more quickly.
In a post announcing his resignation, xAI co-founder and head of inference Yuhai (Tony) Wu said, “Now it’s time to start the next chapter. This is the era of all possibilities. Small teams armed with AI can move mountains and redefine what is possible.”
Shayan Salehian, who worked in product infrastructure and model behavior after training in xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, said last week he was leaving the company “to start something new.”
Valid Kazemi, who briefly worked in machine learning, posted on Tuesday that he left a few weeks ago, adding: “IMO, all the AI labs are making the same thing and it’s boring… so I’m starting something new.” Former xAI engineer Roland Gavrilescu left last November to start Nuraline, a company building “forward-deployable AI agents,” but posted again on Tuesday that he was leaving to build “something new with other people who left xAI.”
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This departure comes at a moment of significant controversy over xAI. The company is facing regulatory scrutiny after Grok created non-consensual, explicit deepfakes that were distributed to X. French authorities raided X’s offices last week as part of their investigation. The company is also moving toward a planned IPO later this year after being legally acquired by SpaceX last week.
Musk is also facing personal controversy after files released by the Justice Department showed an extended conversation with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The emails show Musk discussing two visits to Epstein Island in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted in 2008 of procuring children for prostitution.
xAI has over 1,000 employees, so it is unlikely that turnover will affect the company’s short-term capabilities. Nonetheless, the rapid pace of recent departures has taken on a life of its own online, with users jokingly announcing that they are “leaving xAI” despite never having worked at xAI. It’s a sign of how quickly talk of a “mass exodus” from Musk’s X has snowballed.
Still, it’s harder to dismiss a co-founder’s departure as routine. Their departure raises broader questions about the governance and long-term stability of xAI as Musk continues to ramp up his AI ambitions. In a talent-poor frontier AI, qualities like reputation gravity and mission clarity are important. The more pressing question is not how many engineers are left, but whether xAI can maintain the institutional stability it needs to compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for more information.
Departure Information Timeline:
The following employees recently publicly announced their departure from xAI:
February 6: Engineer Ayush Jaiswal wrote: “This was my last week at xAI. It will be a few months of spending time with my family and tinkering with the AI.”
February 7: Shayan Salehian, who previously worked on product infrastructure and model behavior post-training at X, wrote: “I left xAI to start something new and end a chapter of 7+ years working at Twitter, X and xAI with great gratitude.” He added that working closely with Elon Musk taught him “obsessive attention to detail, manic urgency, and how to think from first principles.”
February 9: Simon Zhai, Technical Staff (MTS), wrote: “Today is my last day at xAI. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity. It has been an amazing journey.”
February 10: Yuhai (Tony) Wu, co-founder and head of inference, wrote: “I am resigned. It is time for my next chapter. This is the era of all possibilities. Small teams armed with AI can move mountains and redefine what is possible.”
February 10: Jimmy Ba, co-founder and head of research/safety, wrote: “The last days of xAI… We are heading towards an era of 100x productivity with the right tools. Recursive self-improvement loops are likely to run in the next 12 months. Now is the time to readjust the slope on the big picture. 2026 is going to be crazy and is likely to be the busiest (and most important) year for humanity’s future.”
February 10: Vahid Kazemi, PhD, ML, wrote that he left xAI “a few weeks ago” and added: “IMO, all the AI labs are making the same thing and it’s boring. I think there’s room for more creativity, so I’m starting something new.”
February 10: “I left xAI today,” wrote Hang Gao, who has worked on multimodal work including Grok Imagine. He described his time there as “truly rewarding”, citing Grok Imagine’s contribution to the launch and praising the team’s “humble craftsmanship and ambitious vision”.
February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, an engineer who left in November to start Nuraline, posted: “I left xAI. Building something new with other people who left xAI. We’re hiring :)”
February 10: Chance Lee, a member of the Macrohard founding team, wrote: “After a brief reset, we’ll head back to the frontier.” (Macrohard is an AI-only software venture under xAI designed to fully automate software development, coding, and operations using a Grok-based multi-agent system. It takes its name from Microsoft.)
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