Elon Musk has initiated a new round of job cuts at his AI firm xAI, with additional co-founders departing due to dissatisfaction with the startup's coding division performance. This follows a management overhaul last month, integrating xAI with SpaceX ahead of a potential major IPO.
"Fixers" from SpaceX and Tesla were brought in to audit xAI, leading to the dismissal of employees whose work was deemed insufficient. Co-founder Guodong Zhang, leading the Imagine team, confirmed his exit after being held responsible for coding product issues. Another co-founder, Zihang Dai, also reportedly left xAI this week. These departures leave only two of the original twelve co-founders who established xAI in March 2023.
Staff have expressed concerns that the ongoing upheaval is negatively impacting morale and hindering xAI's potential. Researchers are reportedly leaving due to burnout from demanding work schedules or better offers from competitors. Elon Musk acknowledged past rejections of promising candidates and stated he will re-engage with them. xAI has recently recruited Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg from code-generation startup Cursor.