"Despite plenty of optimism and an enormous wealth of unlocked funding, a striking number of the company's cofounders are now jumping ship. As CNBC reports, the company lost two of its cofounders in just two days, only the latest in a growing list of executives looking for greener pastures. "Grateful to have helped cofound at the start," AI researcher Jimmy Ba tweeted. "And enormous thanks to Elon Musk for bringing us together on this incredible journey.""
"They join a growing list of departed cofounders since the company kicked off in 2023. Igor Babuschkin left the company in August of last year, followed by Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy. Greg Yang, who has been battling Lyme disease, has also decided to step back from his role to focus on his health. As TechCrunch points out, exactly half of xAI's founding team of 12 individuals have now resigned following Ba's departure earlier this week."
"Following the news, Musk announced that he was reorganizing xAI, which could explain at least some of the recent departures. "As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism," Musk tweeted. "This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors." It remains unclear who was caught up in the firings or whether the cofounders left on their own accord."
xAI was folded into SpaceX and may participate in a very large IPO later this year. The company has substantial funding but is experiencing a wave of departures among cofounders and executives. Multiple founding team members have resigned since 2023, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic, Christian Szegedy, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang, who stepped back for health reasons. Exactly half of the original twelve founders have now left. Elon Musk announced a reorganization dividing xAI into four core areas—Grok, Coding, Imagine, and Macrohard—and stated structural changes required some partings. The circumstances of individual exits remain unclear.
Read at Futurism
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