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At least nine engineers, inclusive two co-foundersthey have now publicly announced their departure from xAI in the past week – although two of these exits appear to have taken place a few weeks ago.
Neither xAI nor Elon Musk have commented on the takeoff announcement.
While attrition is common at startups, the departure of co-founders is extremely low. More than half of the xAI founding team has now left, and the fact that several employees followed within days has increased scrutiny of the company’s stability.
Three of the departing employees are said to be starting new ventures alongside other former xAI engineers, although no details have been made available about the new company. Others are expressing a desire for autonomy and small teams to develop technology quickly, pointing to the expected growth in AI production.
Yuhai (Tony) Wu, xAI co-founder and thought leader, said the post announcing his resignation: “It’s time for my next chapter. This is a time of all possibilities: a small team of AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”
Shayan Salehian, who worked in product development and modeling after teaching xAI and previously worked at Twitter/X, he said last week he left to “start something new.”
Valid Kazemi, who had a brief career in machine learning, it was written on Tuesday which he left a few weeks ago, adding: “IMO, all AI labs are doing the same thing, and it’s boring … Roland Gavrilescu, a former xAI engineer, left in November to start Nuraline, a company building “AI assistants sent forward,” but he also wrote on Tuesday that he left the company to create “something new with others who left xAI.”
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Departures come during the great controversy on xAI. The company is meeting supervisory review After Grok created a range of women’s and children’s accessories that were published on X – French authorities last week attacked X offices as part of the research. The company is also going to a A planned IPO later this year, later officially acquired by SpaceX last week.
Musk is also facing controversy after files released by the Department of Justice show extensive conversations with rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The emails show Musk discussing the trip to Epstein Island on two separate occasions, in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was first convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008.
xAI stores the amount of more than 1,000 employeesso the departure will not affect the short-term efficiency of the firm. However, the latest rush has taken on a life of its own on the Internet, with users jokingly announcing that they too are “quitting xAI” even though it hasn’t worked yet – a sign of how the “crowd exit” story has flooded Musk’s X.
However, the emergence of co-founders is more difficult to eliminate as a conventional threat. As Musk continues to consolidate his AI ambitions, their departure raises questions about the governance and long-term sustainability of xAI. At the edge of AI, where talent is missing, qualities such as the gravity of history and clarity of work. The more important question may not be how many engineers are left, but whether xAI can maintain the stability it needs to compete with competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
TechCrunch reached out to xAI to find out more.
Departure time:
The following have publicly announced their departure from xAI on X days recently:
February 6: Ayush Jaiswalengineer, wrote: “This was my last week at xAI. It will take a few months to settle in with family and talk to AI.”
February 7: Shayan Salehianwho worked in product design and modeling after training and was previously at X, wrote: “I left xAI to start something new, closing my head for 7+ years working on Twitter, X, and xAI with great gratitude.” He also said that working with Elon Musk taught him “a lot of attention to detail, speed, and thinking from basic principles.”
February 9: Simon ZhaiMTS (a member of the technical staff), wrote: “Today is my last day at xAI, I feel blessed for this opportunity. It has been an amazing journey.”
February 10: Yuhai (Tony) Wuco-founder and thought leader, wrote: “I quit. It’s time for my next chapter. It’s time for all the possibilities: a small team of AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”
February 10: Jimmy Baco-founder of research/security, wrote: “Last day at xAI… We’re moving to more than 100x productivity with the right tools. Self-driving cars will be available in the next 12 months. It’s time to update my big picture. 2026 will be the craziest and most exciting year of our future.”
February 10: Vahid KazemiML PhD, wrote that he left xAI “a few weeks ago,” adding: “IMO, all AI laboratories are doing the same thing, and it’s boring. I think there is room for more.
February 10: Be Gaowho has worked on multimodal experiments including Grok Imagine, wrote: “I quit xAI today.” He described his time there as “really rewarding,” citing contributions to the release of Grok Imagine and praising the group’s “humble talent and ambitious vision.”
February 10: Roland Gavrilescuan engineer who left in November to start Nuraline, wrote: “I left xAI. Building something new with others who left xAI. We are hiring :)”
February 10: Chance Lee, a member of the founding team of Macrohard, wrote: “A brief reset and a return to the frontier.” (Macrohard is the only AI software under xAI designed to automate programming, coding, and operations using Grok-powered, multi-agent systems. Its name is a dig at Microsoft.)
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