Elon Musk, known for his confident demeanor, has made a rare gesture of humility by publicly apologizing in a recent social media post.
Following its merger with SpaceX in February, Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has experienced significant internal turmoil. Within just one month, nine of the eleven co-founders who established xAI with Musk have announced their departures.
On March 13, founding member Zhang Guodong, who was responsible for image generation products, posted about his departure. Shortly after, another co-founder, Liu Haotian, confirmed on social media that he had also left the company earlier, stating he was "burned out."
According to a report by Business Insider citing informed sources, co-founder Dai Zihang has also departed from xAI, as his company badge has been removed from his profile.
These three individuals are not the first to leave. Since January, several other co-founders, including Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang, have departed one after another. As a result, of the eleven founding members (excluding Musk himself) who started the company with him in 2023, only Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen remain.
Faced with the near-total departure of his core team, Musk, who is typically known for his firm stance, displayed an unusual moment of self-reflection. "Over the past few years, many talented people who applied to join xAI were rejected without even getting an interview. For that, I deeply apologize," Musk stated on his social media platform.
He revealed that he is working with hiring lead Baris Akis to review the company's interview records and will re-contact candidates who showed potential but were previously turned down. Earlier, Musk had acknowledged that "xAI was not built properly initially, so it is being rebuilt from the ground up. Tesla Motors went through the same thing."
However, this wave of talent departures may not solely be due to early structural issues but could also be linked to the merger of xAI and SpaceX. On February 2, Musk announced the merger of xAI with his rocket company SpaceX, valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. Insiders suggest the merger may be preparation for an initial public offering.
Ten days later, xAI released a video outlining its future vision. Musk shared it, adding, "To improve execution efficiency, xAI was reorganized a few days ago. As a company grows, especially one as fast-moving as xAI, its structure must evolve like any organism. Unfortunately, this means we have to part ways with some people."
This seemingly measured statement marked the beginning of the large-scale personnel changes. According to the Financial Times, dissatisfied with the performance of the coding division, Musk brought in "fixers" from SpaceX and Tesla Motors to review xAI and dismissed several employees for poor performance. The report, citing sources, indicated that some co-founders were effectively forced out.
Musk is indeed restructuring xAI's internal team as indicated. On the same day Zhang Guodong left, xAI successfully recruited product and engineering lead Andrew Milich and engineering lead Jason Ginsberg from AI coding tool startup Cursor. Both will report directly to Musk.
On the 14th, Musk personally posted to welcome AI researcher Devendra Chaplot to the team, sharing a photo of the two. Chaplot, a founding member of Mistral AI and former research scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), stated in his own post that he will join both SpaceX and xAI to work with Musk's team on developing superintelligence.
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