Elon Musk’s AI company xAI is facing another departure at the top. Co-founder and AI researcher Jimmy Ba has announced that he is stepping down from his role at the company. In a message on X, he said he looked back with appreciation on his involvement in the founding and early stages of xAI.
Ba’s departure follows shortly after the departure of co-founder Tony Wu, who announced his departure earlier this week, CNBC reports. The successive departures coincide with a period of major changes within the company. xAI was recently merged with SpaceX, Musk’s space company. At the same time, plans are circulating for SpaceX to go public later this year. The departure of several key figures therefore raises questions about the internal stability and strategic direction of the AI company.
Jimmy Ba, affiliated with the University of Toronto, is a respected name in the AI research world. His work made an important contribution to the development of the Grok 4 models, xAI’s latest generation of AI systems. Co-founders Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic, and Christian Szegedy also recently left the company. In addition, Greg Yang recently announced that he would be scaling back his role to focus on his recovery from Lyme disease.
The integration of xAI and SpaceX was achieved through a stock swap. According to reports, SpaceX was valued at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. Musk previously used a similar structure to bring his social network X, formerly Twitter, under the umbrella of xAI.
Regulators are keeping an eye on xAI
In addition to internal shifts, the company is being scrutinized by various regulators in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Investigations were launched after it emerged that the Grok chatbot and associated image generator could be used to generate and distribute explicit deepfake images without the consent of those involved. Images of minors were also allegedly used as a starting point.
xAI was founded in 2023 with the ambition to compete with established AI players such as OpenAI and Google. Its original mission was to gain fundamental insights into the nature of the universe. However, the focus now seems to have shifted to rapid growth, commercial application, and closer integration with Musk’s broader technology portfolio.
To date, the company has not responded substantively to the recent personnel changes and ongoing investigations.