The xAI founding team is reduced from 11 to 10, Musk admits "first try wasn't right," and is now rebuilding from scratch

According to 1M AI News monitoring, xAI co-founder Manuel Kroiss has informed colleagues of his upcoming departure. Kroiss previously led model pre-training at xAI, reporting directly to Musk, and had joined after stints at Google and DeepMind. His exit brings the total number of departures from xAI's original 11 co-founders to 10, leaving only Ross Nordeen from Tesla remaining. Since January this year, Guodong Zhang, Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang have left one after another.

In this month's Abundance Summit, Musk acknowledged that xAI is "behind competitors in programming ability," stating on X that "xAI didn't get it right the first time and is rebuilding from scratch," and mentioning that the company is re-evaluating past rejected job applicants. He is currently personally taking over direct reports of dozens of employees, bringing in reinforcements from Tesla and SpaceX, while also laying off dozens of current staff.

This reorganization comes after SpaceX's acquisition of xAI earlier this year. SpaceX is expected to file for an IPO this year, with a projected valuation of up to $1.5 trillion.