Who are the remaining xAI co-founders?

As of March 2026, only Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen remain as co-founders at xAI (besides Musk). Ten of the original twelve co-founders have departed, including critical figures like Igor Babuschkin (Grok's primary architect), Jimmy Ba (AI safety), and Tony Wu (foundational models).

Why are xAI co-founders leaving?

Musk acknowledged the company wasn't 'built right' and drew a comparison to Tesla's original founders departing. The underlying causes appear to be: extreme work demands (reportedly 80-100 hours/week), highly centralized decision-making, opaque pivots in technical direction, and Musk's chaotic communication style via X.

How does this affect xAI's competitive position?

The architectural knowledge that departed founders carry cannot be easily replaced. Grok has shown growing performance gaps vs GPT-5.4 and Claude 3.7 on some benchmarks. However, Musk's structural advantages—unlimited capital, Colossus supercomputer infrastructure, and data synergies with Tesla and X—partially offset the human capital losses.

— AI DAILY

Sources

AI Digest
Indian Express