Musk's AI start-up loses more co-founders: What's happening at xAI?
13 Mar 2026

Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, is witnessing a mass exodus of its top executives. The latest to leave the company is Zihang Dai, who departed earlier this week.

His departure comes after a string of exits by other co-founders since January, including Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu and Greg Yang.

Guodong Zhang has also said he plans to leave in the coming days.

If Zhang leaves, only two out of the original 11 co-founders will be left at xAI.

Major restructuring and layoffs at xAI
Company changes

The recent departures come as xAI undergoes a major restructuring under Musk.

The changes have resulted in layoffs affecting projects such as Macrohard (an automation tool) and Grok Imagine (a tool for creating images and videos).

Despite these upheavals, the company remains focused on its AI objectives.

It is now owned by SpaceX and is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) later this year, which could value SpaceX at $1.5 trillion.

New hires for xAI
New additions

xAI recently hired Jason Ginsberg and Andrew Milich, who previously led product engineering at AI coding firm Cursor.

The new hires were announced on X, with Musk noting that xAI needed a shake-up.

"xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up," he wrote in response to a post about the new hires.

Musk's comments on reorganization need
Reorganization rationale

Musk had previously commented on the need for a reorganization at xAI, citing its growth and the need to be more effective at this scale.

He said, "And actually, when this happens, there's some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages."

The restructuring came after Wu and Ba left the company.