Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, two of the co-founders of artificial intelligence company xAI, have announced their resignations from the company they founded with billionaire Elon Musk less than three years ago. Both men confirmed their departures through posts on social media.
In his post, Wu expressed warm feelings about his time at xAI but said it was "time for my next chapter." He noted that the current era is one in which "a small team armed with artificial intelligence can move mountains and redefine what is possible." Neither Ba nor Wu gave specific reasons for their resignations or described their future plans in their posts, but both thanked Musk.
I resigned from xAI today.
— Yuhuai (Tony) Wu (@Yuhu_ai_) February 10, 2026
This company - and the family we became - will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together.
It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed…
Half of the co-founders have already left the company
According to information from the Financial Times, Ba's departure followed tensions within the technical team over demands to improve the performance of the AI model. Musk is pushing xAI to catch up with competitors OpenAI and Anthropic. Ba did not respond to a request for comment on the report sent via messages on the X platform.
These departures are the latest in a series of exits from xAI, leaving the company with only half of its 12 co-founders. Wu is leaving a company that is in a very different position from where it was when it was founded in 2023.
Other notable co-founder departures include Igor Babuschkin, who left the company in August 2025 to establish his own venture capital fund focused on AI safety. Co-founders Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy have also left since the company was founded in 2023. Co-founder Greg Yang stepped back from the company last month due to complications caused by chronic Lyme disease.
In addition to the co-founders, other recent notable departures from xAI include general counsel Robert Keele, communications managers Dave Heinzinger and John Stoll, head of product engineering Haofei Wang, and chief financial officer Mike Liberatore, who left for OpenAI after just 102 days, during which he said he worked "120+ hours a week."
Merger with SpaceX
Wu's departure comes just days after CEO Elon Musk merged xAI with SpaceX. According to Musk, the move is intended to enable the creation of orbital data centers and ultimately "scale to create a sentient sun that understands the universe and extends the light of consciousness to the stars." However, some view the move more as financial engineering, combining xAI's nearly CZK 25 billion in annual losses and SpaceX's approximately CZK 200 billion in annual profits into a single entity that is better prepared to go public.
Musk previously incorporated the social network X (formerly Twitter) into a single entity with xAI in March 2025. At the time the deal closed, X was valued at $33 billion (approximately CZK 825 billion), which was 25% less than Musk had paid for the social network in 2022.
Controversy surrounding Grok
In recent months, xAI has faced a new wave of criticism over Grok's willingness to generate sexualized images of minors. This led to an investigation by the California attorney general and a police raid on the company's Paris offices.
According to reports, xAI had 1,200 employees in March 2025, including AI engineers and those more focused on the X social network. This figure also included 900 employees who worked exclusively as "AI tutors," although approximately 500 of them were reportedly laid off in September.
Sources: arstechnica.com and cnbc.com
