Elon Musk explains reason behind recent xAI exits

xAI, Elon Musk's AI venture, has seen several departures over the past week, and now the tech billionaire has come up with his remark, suggesting that these exits were due to fit rather than performance.

Musk addressed the wave of departures from xAI, whose six out of the 12 original co-founders have left.

“Because we’ve reached a certain scale, we’re organising the company to be more effective,” he stated, according to The New York Times. “Some people are better suited for the early stages of a company and less so for later stages.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Musk elaborated on X, indicating that the departures were not voluntary. “xAI was reorganised a few days ago to improve speed of execution,” he wrote. “As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve. This, unfortunately, required parting ways with some people.”

The spate of exits comes in the midst of the company “hiring aggressively” and is open for recruits with a characteristic Musk pitch: “Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you.”

The loss of half of the xAI co-founders in a short time has raised eyebrows, and Musk’s remarks seem to be shaping the narrative, framing the exits as necessary rather than problematic.

In total, around nine engineers, including the two co-founders, publicly announced their departure from xAI over the past week. Some departing staff members proclaimed to be inclined towards more autonomy and smaller teams to innovate rapidly in AI.

The xAI departures also follow massive scrutiny of the company after it was caught up in regulatory issues related to non-consensual explicit deepfakes created by Grok.

Even while maintaining a workforce of over 1,000 employees, the rapid exits in xAI point to serious tensions within the company, challenging xAI’s ability to attract and retain top talent in a competitive landscape.