Elon Musk’s xAI loses co-founder Tony Wu in latest senior departure

Elon Musk's xAI has lost another founding member.Tony Wu announced late on Monday that he resigned from the artificial intelligence startup, becoming the latest co-founder to leave the company. Others, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, have also departed, and Greg Yang announced last month that he would be stepping back from his role to focus on his battle with Lyme disease."It's time for my next chapter," Wu wrote in a post on X. "It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what's possible."Wu's departure comes as xAI faces a consumer backlash and regulatory probes in multiple countries. The company's Grok AI chatbot and image generator allowed mass-creation and syndication of non-consensual, explicit, deepfake images that were based on photos of real people, including children.Tesla CEO Musk launched xAI in 2023 alongside 11 other people in an effort to compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google. The company's stated goal was to "understand the true nature of the universe," according to its website at the time. Last week, Musk announced that his rocket company SpaceX acquired xAI ahead of what could be a potentially massive IPO. The record-setting transaction is the largest merger of all time and values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, according to documents viewed by CNBC.Musk previously merged xAI with X in a multibillion-dollar deal he announced last March.--CNBC'a Lora Kolodny contributed to this reportWATCH: SpaceX takes on xAI cash burn after mergerGot a confidential news tip? We want to hear from you.Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inboxGet this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services.© 2026 Versant Media, LLC.

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