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Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has lost two co-founders in less than two days. Jimmy Ba announced his exit Tuesday, one day after fellow co-founder Tony Wu stepped down. The departures come as xAI merges with SpaceX and faces scrutiny over its Grok chatbot.
Elon Musk's xAI has lost its second co-founder in 48 hours, marking another leadership shakeup at the fast-growing artificial intelligence company.
Jimmy Ba, an influential AI researcher and one of the company's original 12 founders, said Tuesday that he was leaving the startup. In a post on X, Ba wrote that it was time to "recalibrate" and described 2026 as a consequential year, adding that he was grateful to have helped build the company in its early days.
His departure follows that of fellow co-founder Tony Wu, who announced his resignation late Monday. Wu's exit came after an internal restructuring that shifted several of his responsibilities to other executives. Ba had also seen some of his duties reassigned in recent months as xAI reorganized parts of its operations.
Founded by Musk in 2023 to compete with OpenAI and Google, xAI set out to "understand the true nature of the universe." The company quickly gained attention for its Grok chatbot and image-generation tools, as well as for controversial features that pushed the boundaries of AI content moderation.
In recent months, Grok faced backlash after generating nonconsensual explicit images based on real people, prompting restrictions on its image tools. Regulators in the U.S., Europe and Asia have begun examining the company's practices.
Ba, a University of Toronto computer science professor who studied under AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, played a key role in research behind xAI's Grok models. With his departure, six of the startup's original founders have now left, most within the past year.
The exits come as Musk moves to merge xAI with SpaceX in an all-stock deal reportedly valuing the combined businesses in the trillions of dollars. SpaceX is also said to be preparing for a potential public offering later this year.
