xAI Co-Founders Depart as Musk Rebuilds Company

Earlier this month, nearly all of Elon Musk's co-founders at his artificial intelligence startup xAI had already departed the company. Now, according to recent reports, the final two co-founders have also left the organization.

Business Insider reported on Wednesday that Manuel Kroiss informed colleagues about his decision to leave xAI. Shortly after, the publication revealed that Ross Nordeen had departed the company on Friday.

Musk recently stated that xAI "was not built right [the] first time around," and is now "being rebuilt from the foundations up." The company was recently acquired by Musk's SpaceX, bringing SpaceX, xAI, and X (formerly Twitter) together under one corporate umbrella, coinciding with reports that SpaceX is planning to go public.

Both Kroiss and Nordeen reported directly to Musk, according to Business Insider. Kroiss led the company's pretraining team, while Nordeen served as Musk's "right-hand operator." Nordeen reportedly joined xAI from Tesla and was involved in planning major layoffs at Twitter following Musk's acquisition of the company in 2022.

TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for comment.