Exodus of cofounders from Elon Musk's AI startup continues, only ...

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is witnessing the exodus of cofounders at a continuing pace. As reported by Business Insider, Zihang Dai left the company this week and his xAI badge disappeared from his X (formerly known as Twitter) profile. On the other hand, Guodong Zhang, one of Elon Musk’s closest collaborators has now informed the colleagues that he plans to leave the company in the coming days. These departures for xAI follow a string of exits since January including Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang. Once Dai and Zhang depart, only two of the original 11 cofounders Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen will remain. The rapid thinning of the founding team raises questions about stability inside Musk’s AI venture.

Guodong Zhang’s role ay xAI and Elon Musk’s admission

Guodong Zhang previously worked at Google DeepMind and he was leading two of xAI’s flagship projects — Grok Code and Grok Image. Earlier this year, Zhang was also promoted to a larger role earlier this year, shortly before Wu’s departure. At the Abundance Conference, Musk admitted that “Grok is currently behind in coding” and said he had just come from an all-hands meeting focused on catching up with competitors.

Background of departing cofounders

Dai, a former Google researcher with a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, was part of xAI’s technical staff. Zhang, with a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, reported directly to Musk and was considered a key figure in the company’s leadership. Both declined to comment on their departures, while xAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Reorganization and layoffs at xAI

The company has shed dozens of employees since January, following Musk’s reorganization of xAI. Some of the cuts affected teams working on Macrohard, an AI project focused on white-collar automation, and Grok Imagine, its image and video generator. Musk explained during a February all-hands that some employees were better suited to the early stages of a startup than to scaling operations.


The leadership shake-up comes as xAI, now under SpaceX ownership, gears up for a potential IPO that could value SpaceX at $1.5 trillion. Yet with multiple cofounders gone and projects reportedly stalled, the company faces mounting pressure to prove it can deliver on Musk’s ambitious AI vision.