xAI Founding Team Turnover Hits 50%: Two Co-founders Depart Amid SpaceX Acquisition Plans

As Elon Musk's AI company, xAI has recently faced high-level turbulence. Co-founders Dongwei Wu and Jimmy Ba announced their departures recently, becoming the 10th and 11th founding members to leave since its establishment in 2023. Now, only 6 of the original 12-member team remain, with a turnover rate of 50%.

The two founders did not disclose their reasons for leaving or future plans, but both thanked Musk. According to insiders, Ba's departure was related to the huge pressure on the team to improve AI model performance—Musk pushed xAI to catch up with rivals like OpenAI, leading to high-intensity development rhythms and strategic differences in the engineering team.

This change comes at a key juncture of SpaceX's acquisition of xAI. The integrated new entity is valued at $1.25 trillion and plans to go public in the second half of 2026 to support Musk's vision of space-based AI data centers. However, frequent departures of core talents have raised external concerns about xAI's technical stability and governance structure.