Senior engineers, including co-founders, left xAI amid the controversy

At least nine developers, including two founders, have now publicly announced their departure from xAI in the past week – although two of those exits appear to have happened in the past few weeks.

Neither xAI nor Elon Musk have publicly commented on the move.

While attrition is common at startups, founder turnover is minimal. More than half of xAI’s founding team has now left, and the fact that several employees have followed within days has intensified scrutiny about the company’s stability.

The three departing employees say they will start a new venture alongside other former xAI developers, although no details are available about the new venture. Others suggest a desire for more autonomy and smaller teams to build frontier technologies more quickly, pointing to the expected growth of AI productivity.

Yuhai (Tony) Wu, xAI’s founder and thought leader, said in a post announcing his resignation: “It’s time for my next chapter. It’s an era full of possibilities: a small team armed with AI can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”

Shayan Salehian, who worked on product infrastructure and behavioral modeling behind xAI training and formerly worked at Twitter/X, said last week that he was leaving to “start something new.”

Valid Kazemi, who had a short stint working in machine learning, posted on Tuesday that he had left a few weeks ago, adding: “IMO, all AI labs are building the same thing, and it’s boring…So, I’m starting a new one.” Roland Gavrilescu, a former xAI engineer, left in November to start Nuraline, a company that builds “preferred AI agents,” but tweeted on Tuesday that he had left the company to build “something new with others who left xAI.”

The move comes at a time of great controversy for xAI. The company is facing legal scrutiny after Grok created unauthorized deepfakes of women and children that were broadcast on X – French authorities last week raided X’s offices as part of an investigation. The company is also eyeing a planned IPO later this year, after it was officially acquired by SpaceX last week.

Musk has also faced personal controversy after files were published by the Justice Department showing lengthy conversations with convicted rapist and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The emails show Musk discussing visiting Epstein’s island on two separate occasions, in 2012 and 2013. Epstein was convicted of child trafficking in 2008.

xAI maintains a headcount of more than 1,000 employees, so the move is unlikely to affect the company’s short-term capabilities. Still, the rapid pace of the latest departure has taken on a life of its own online, with users jokingly announcing that they too are “leaving xAI” despite never having worked there — a sign of how quickly the “mass exodus” narrative snowballed from Musk’s X.

Still, the co-founder’s exit is hard to dismiss as a general blunder. As Musk continues to consolidate his AI ambitions, their departure raises broader questions about the governance and long-term stability of xAI. At the AI ​​frontier, where talent is scarce, qualities like gravity gravitate towards reputation and clarity of purpose matter. The most pressing question may not be how many developers are left, but whether xAI can maintain the institutional stability needed to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

TechCrunch reached out to xAI for more information.

Timeline of travel announcements:

The following employees have publicly announced their departures from xAI at X in recent days:

February 6: Ayush Jaiswal, an engineer, wrote: “This was my last week at xAI. It will be a few months to spend time with family and discuss AI.”

February 7: Shayan Salehian, who worked in product infrastructure and behavioral modeling after training and was at X, wrote: “I left xAI to start something new, I close the chapter of my 7+ years working on Twitter, X, and xAI with great gratitude.” He added that working closely with Elon Musk taught him “attention to detail, maddening urgency, and first-principles thinking.”

February 9: Simon Zhai, MTS (member of technical staff), wrote: “Today is my last day at xAI, I feel lucky for this opportunity. It’s been an amazing journey.”

February 10: Yuhai (Tony) Wu, founder and thought leader, wrote: “I quit. It’s time for my next chapter. It’s an era of absolute opportunity: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”

February 10: Jimmy Ba, co-founder and security research/lead, wrote: “Last day at xAI… We’re headed for 100x years of productivity with the right tools. Iterative self-improvement loops will probably go live in the next 12 months. Time to re-align my organization in the big picture. 2026 is going to be crazy and our next year is probably going to be crazy.”

February 10: Vahid Kazemi, ML PhD, wrote that he had left xAI “a few weeks ago,” adding: “IMO, all AI labs build exactly the same thing, and it’s boring. I think there’s room for more innovation. So, I’m starting something new.”

February 10: Hang Gao, who worked on multimodal efforts including Grok Imagine, wrote: “I left xAI today.” He described his time there as “really rewarding,” citing contributions to Grok Imagine releases and praising the group’s “low-key creativity and ambitious vision.”

February 10: Roland Gavrilescu, an engineer who left in November to start Nuraline, posted: “I left xAI. I’m building something new with others who left xAI. We’re hiring :)”

February 10: Chance Lee, a member of the founding team of Macrohard, wrote: “To take the reset and return to the border.” (Macrohard is the only AI software program under xAI designed to automate software development, coding, and operations using Grok-powered, multi-agent systems. Its name is a dig at Microsoft.)

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