All 11 of xAI's Original Co-Founders Have Now Left the Company

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has lost all 11 of its original co-founders. The last two, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have both departed, according to Business Insider reports this week.

Kroiss led xAI's pretraining team and reported directly to Musk. Nordeen served as Musk's right-hand operator and came to xAI from Tesla, where he was also involved in planning major layoffs at Twitter after Musk's 2022 acquisition. Both left within days of each other.

The departures cap a broader exodus. Earlier this month, Musk acknowledged that xAI was not built right and said the company is being rebuilt from the foundations up. In February, xAI was acquired by SpaceX, bringing it together with X (formerly Twitter) under one corporate umbrella as SpaceX prepares for an IPO.

The full co-founder departure is a striking milestone for a company that launched in 2023 with a high-profile team and quickly grew Grok into a competitive AI assistant. Whether the rebuild under Musk and SpaceX will retain any of the original technical vision remains to be seen.