It seems that Elon Musk’s xAI keeps bleeding executives – two more co-founders have left the AI startup, bringing the total number of departures from the original 12-member founding team to six in less than three years.
Jimmy Ba, a prominent machine-learning researcher and associate professor at the University of Toronto, announced his exit on Tuesday, February 10, via a post on X. “Last day at xAI,” Ba wrote. “xAI’s mission is push humanity up the Kardashev tech tree. Grateful to have helped cofound at the start. And enormous thanks to Elon Musk for bringing us together on this incredible journey.” He added that he would “stay close as a friend of the team” and described 2026 as potentially “the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species.”
Last day at xAI.
xAI's mission is push humanity up the Kardashev tech tree. Grateful to have helped cofound at the start. And enormous thanks to @elonmusk for bringing us together on this incredible journey. So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close…
— Jimmy Ba (@jimmybajimmyba) February 11, 2026
Ba’s departure came less than 24 hours after fellow co-founder Tony Wu posted his own exit announcement on Monday. “It’s time for my next chapter,” Wu wrote. “It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.” Neither Ba nor Wu disclosed their next professional steps. The exits follow a string of departures from xAI’s founding group. Kyle Kosic left for OpenAI in mid-2024. Igor Babuschkin departed in early 2025 to start a venture firm. Christian Szegedy stepped away later in 2025. Greg Yang, another co-founder, announced last month that he was stepping back due to a Lyme disease diagnosis.
The latest departures come just weeks after SpaceX completed its all-stock acquisition of xAI, creating a combined entity valued at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX is still planning an initial public offering later this year. The merger has consolidated Musk’s AI, social media (X), and space infrastructure businesses under one umbrella, but it has also concentrated attention on xAI’s execution amid rapid turnover at the senior level.
To provide some contect, xAI was established in July 2023 with a mission – to “understand the true nature of the universe,” as stated on its launch website. The founding team of 12 included Musk, Ba, Wu, and other notable AI researchers from institutions like Google, DeepMind, and the University of Toronto. Ba, who earned his PhD under Geoffrey Hinton (often called the “godfather of AI”), brought expertise in deep learning optimization tech that influenced early Grok iterations. Wu, with experience in large-scale AI systems at Google, contributed to infrastructure and model scaling.
The company quickly gained traction, raising capital, including a $20 billion Series E in January at a $230 billion valuation, and releasing Grok, its answer to ChatGPT and Claude and its own offering in the AI chatbot race. Grok’s image generation capabilities, however, sparked controversy when they enabled the creation of non-consensual explicit content, leading to regulatory probes and controversies. And as mentioned earlier, aAI merged with SpaceX earlier this month in an all-stock deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, bringing space, AI, and EV under one aegis.