Elon Musk has initiated a new round of workforce reductions at his artificial intelligence firm xAI, resulting in the departure of additional co-founders due to concerns about the coding division’s performance, as per a recent report by the Financial Times.
Following xAI’s merger with SpaceX, Musk restructured the company’s leadership and dispatched teams from SpaceX and Tesla to conduct an audit. The report indicates that several employees perceived as underperforming have been released from their roles.
One of the co-founders, Guodong Zhang, who headed xAI’s Imagine team, has exited the company after Musk attributed coding product issues to him and reassigned his key responsibilities, sources informed the FT. Zhang confirmed his departure on X this past Thursday. Another co-founder, Zihang Dai, also departed the previous week.
With these recent departures, only two out of the original twelve co-founders who joined Musk in launching xAI in March 2023, are still associated with the company.
According to the FT, employees have expressed discontent over the ongoing changes, citing negative impacts on morale and company progress. Researchers are reportedly leaving due to burnout from Musk’s demanding work standards or after receiving more attractive offers from competitors. Recruiters are actively approaching candidates previously turned down by xAI, often with improved terms.
In response to these challenges, Musk addressed the situation in a post on X on Friday, expressing regret to talented individuals who were not granted interviews and pledging to reconnect with promising candidates. Notably, xAI recently onboarded Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg from the coding startup Cursor on Thursday.
