Business

xAI Co-Founders Tony Wu, Jimmy Ba Join Exodus
By Reuters | 10 Feb, 2026

Half of xAI's 12 co-founders, which includes Elon Musk, have departed amid tensions following the merger with SpaceX and Musk's push to catch up with OpenAI and Anthropic.

xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba have resigned from the artificial intelligence firm they started with billionaire Elon Musk less than three years ago, they said in social media posts.

The exits are the latest in an exodus from xAI that leaves the firm with half of its 12 co-founders.

The Financial Times reported that Ba's resignation followed tensions within its technical team over demands to improve its AI model performance as Musk pushes to catch up to rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Ba did not immediately respond to a request for comment via X messaging on the FT report.

Ba and Wu did not say in their posts on X why they were resigning or detail their next plans, but thanked Musk.

The latest changes at xAI come days after Musk's SpaceX said it will purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire's ambitions to put data centers in space.

(Reporting by Natalia Bueno Rebolledo and Chris Thomas in Mexico City; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)