2026-02-13T13:09:00.565Z
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- Elon Musk’s AI startup is facing a wave of departures among its top employees.
- Those leaving include xAI co-founders Jimmy Barr and Tony Wu, who thanked Musk for the opportunity.
- Since Musk founded xAI in 2023, more than half of xAI’s co-founders have left the company.
xAI is facing an exodus of talented employees.
Two co-founders and at least seven other employees have announced their departure from Elon Musk’s AI startup in recent days, with the billionaire telling xAI employees at an all-hands meeting Tuesday that the company is restructuring to continue growing.
In a post about X, Musk wrote that xAI has been reorganized “to improve execution speed.”
“Unfortunately, this has required us to part ways with some people,” he wrote, adding that xAI is still “actively hiring.”
This comes after Musk announced last week that xAI would merge with his rocket company SpaceX, with the billionaire saying the combined entity would help build a network of AI data centers in Earth’s orbit. I
In a Tuesday bulletin published in
SpaceX is reportedly preparing for a major initial public offering that could value the company as much as $1.5 trillion later this year. This could be a big boost for xAI, which reportedly burned through billions of dollars last year.
The departure is the latest disruption to hit the startup since Musk founded xAI in 2023 to take on Google and OpenAI.
Since then, about half of the company’s co-founders have left, and xAI has faced global backlash over sexualized images of real people generated on X by Grok, the company’s AI chatbot.
Here’s everyone who left xAI in its recent leak. Business Insider reached out to each of the employees listed below for comment.
tony woo
xAI co-founder Tony Wu announced his resignation on Tuesday. In a post on X, the former Google researcher said it was time for “the next chapter” and thanked Musk for the “ride of a lifetime.”
Business Insider’s Grace Kay previously reported that Wu began reporting directly to Musk last year and led xAI’s inference efforts.
jimmy bar
Jimmy Barr became the second xAI co-founder to announce his departure within 48 hours on Tuesday.
The executive, who previously oversaw the company’s AI tutoring efforts, also thanked Musk for the opportunity and said he was proud of what xAI has accomplished in a post about X.
Ba’s departure means six of the 11 co-founders who launched xAI with Musk in 2023 have left the company.
Han Gao
Technical staff member Han Gao also announced his retirement from xAI in an X post on Tuesday.
A Berkeley graduate who worked on xAI’s Grok Imagine AI video generator called his time at the company “unique and memorable.”
Vahid Kazemi
Vahid Kazemi, a member of xAI’s technical staff, told X on February 11 that he left the company several weeks ago. “That was short! IMO, every AI lab is making the exact same thing and it’s boring. I think there’s room for more creativity,” he wrote, adding that he was starting “something new.”
Kazemi joined xAI last year and previously worked at OpenAI. He previously worked at Google and Apple.
Ayush Jaiswal
Ayush Jaiswal works on Grok at xAI and announced on February 6th that it would be his last week at the company. “It will take a few months to spend time with family and tinker with the AI,” he wrote in a post about X. According to his LinkedIn profile, Jaiswal joined xAI in September 2025. Prior to that, he was Director of Growth at Scale AI.
Shayan Salehian
Shayan Salehian announced on February 7 that after seven years at Twitter and X, he is leaving to build something new.
In his post about X, he said he was also working on the X timeline and various Grok models, adding that he was leaving to work on something “focused on accelerating science.”
“Working closely with Elon across X and xAI, we saw what happens when you refuse to accept the impossible as an answer,” he wrote about X.
Simon Zai
xAI technical staff member Simon Zhai joined the company in October 2025 and announced his retirement on February 9th.
“Today is my last day at xAI. I feel so lucky to have had this opportunity. It’s been an amazing journey,” he wrote in a short farewell post to X. Prior to joining xAI, Mr. Zhai was a researcher at Google DeepMind.
andrew marr
Technical staff member Andrew Marr wrote in an X post on Wednesday that he left xAI this week.
LinkedIn said Ma worked on X’s recommendation system and was “solely responsible” for creating a new version of the platform’s user search algorithm.
The former Twitter engineer praised xAI’s “wartime thinking” and thanked Musk for “creating this organization that the world needs.”
Radhakrishnan Venkataramani
Radhakrishnan Venkataramani wrote in an X post on Thursday that he resigned from xAI this week.
The former Google and Facebook engineer joined xAI last July to work on Grok’s inference and reinforcement learning systems, as well as the company’s coding models, according to LinkedIn.
In his farewell post, Venkataramani said he was “grateful” to be a part of xAI, calling the company “the most hardcore team ever.”
