Editorial illustration for Six of xAI’s twelve original co‑founders, including Ba, have left Musk’s startup
xAI Founders Flee Musk's AI Startup in Mass Exodus
Six of xAI’s twelve original co‑founders, including Ba, have left Musk’s startup
Half a founding team gone in three years isn't a personnel shuffle. It's a hemorrhage. Six of the twelve original co-founders at Elon Musk's AI startup xAI have now left. The latest is Ba, who announced his exit with the line, "to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture." In engineer-speak, that translates to a fundamental disagreement over direction.
Before him went a roster of serious talent. Igor Babuschkin. Yuhuai (Tony) Wu.
Kyle Kosier. Greg Yang. Christian Szegedy.
Their pedigrees list the top labs: DeepMind, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft Research. Tony Wu, who reported straight to Musk and built the company's core models, left back in February 2026. These weren't junior hires.
They were the architecture team. Now half of them are working elsewhere.
Despite these promising prospects at xAI, he says he wants "to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture." With Ba's departure, six of xAI's twelve original co-founders have now left--half the core team. Previous departures include Igor Babuschkin (formerly at DeepMind and OpenAI), Yuhuai (Tony) Wu (formerly at Google and Stanford), Kyle Kosier (formerly at OpenAI), Greg Yang (formerly at Microsoft Research), and Christian Szegedy (formerly at Google). February 10, 2026: After Igor Babushkin, another xAI co-founder has announced his departure.
Tony Wu, who was responsible for developing the company's foundational models and reasoning capabilities, reported directly to Musk. He joined xAI from Google when the company was founded in 2023.
Losing one star is normal. Losing six constitutes a pattern, and patterns have causes. They suggest a project being violently reshaped or one that has lost its original plot.
Ba's phrasing about recalibrating his gradient is the kind of careful, technical euphemism used when someone can no longer see the point. For a venture that sells itself on visionary intellect, that's a damning piece of feedback. The remaining six now run a company whose foundational brain trust has been hollowed out.
What gets built next will be different. It will have to be.
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Common Questions Answered
How many of xAI's original co-founders have left the company?
Six out of the twelve original co-founders have departed from xAI, which represents exactly half of the startup's founding team. The notable departures include Igor Babuschkin, Yuhuai (Tony) Wu, Kyle Kosier, Greg Yang, Christian Szegedy, and most recently, Jimmy Ba.
Why did Jimmy Ba decide to leave xAI?
Jimmy Ba stated he wanted to 'recalibrate my gradient on the big picture', suggesting a desire to reassess his personal and professional priorities. His departure is part of a broader trend of high-profile exits from xAI, and he remains committed to the broader mission of pushing humanity forward technologically.
What backgrounds do the departed xAI co-founders come from?
The departing co-founders have impressive academic and industry backgrounds, including researchers from top institutions like DeepMind, OpenAI, Google, Stanford, Microsoft Research, and the University of Toronto. Many of these individuals were leading experts in artificial intelligence before joining xAI's founding team.
Further Reading
- Papers with Code - Latest NLP Research — Papers with Code
- Hugging Face Daily Papers — Hugging Face
- ArXiv CS.CL (Computation and Language) — ArXiv
