Elon Musk says xAI must be rebuilt as co-founder exodus continues, SpaceX IPO awaits
Summary
Elon Musk acknowledges xAI "was not built right first time" and says the startup is being rebuilt from the foundations up after several co-founders — including Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, Zihang Dai, Guodong Zhang, and Toby Pohlen — exited. The departures follow Musk's merger of xAI into SpaceX, a planned Tesla investment tied to a larger funding round, and SpaceX preparing for a potential IPO. Musk has ordered a review of past interview candidates, reached back out to promising talent, and reportedly initiated job cuts after competitors' coding tools advanced; SpaceX also hired two programmers from AI coding startup Cursor. xAI faces regulatory scrutiny over its Grok chatbot and image generator for enabling non-consensual deepfakes and is building major power and data infrastructure in Tennessee and Mississippi to support its models.
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