PALO ALTO: In an ongoing structural upheaval, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has seen the exit of its last original co-founder. Ross Nordeen, alongside fellow co-founder Manuel Kroiss, reportedly departed the company this week, leaving none of the initial eleven founders remaining.
Nordeen, who came to xAI from Tesla where he built data centers for the Full Self-Driving system, acted as a right-hand operator for Musk and drove execution across the firm. Kroiss was equally pivotal, leading the company's pretraining team. Both executives reported directly to Musk. Their departures mark the culmination of a broader exodus that included high-profile specialists such as Guodong Zhang, Zihang Dai, and Jimmy Ba over recent months.
The sweeping turnover occurs amid significant restructuring within Musk's corporate empire. Following xAI’s recent acquisition by SpaceX, data center operations are being integrated while xAI scales its ecosystem. The startup’s flagship chatbot, Grok, still heavily relies on integration with X, leading to industry comparisons with more established competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk himself has been candid regarding the firm's architectural challenges, publicly acknowledging the necessity for a hard reset. "xAI was not built right the first time around," Musk recently stated, explaining that the company "is being rebuilt from the foundations up."
Despite the turnover, xAI continues aggressive recruitment, seeking talent to specialize in sectors like financial markets to keep Grok competitive.