Earlier this month, it looked like all but two of Elon Musk’s 11 co-founders at his AI startup xAI had departed the company . Now, according to Business Insider, the remaining two co-founders, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have left as well.
BI said on Wednesday that Kroiss had told people that he’s leaving xAI , then reported that Nordeen left the company on Friday .
Musk recently claimed xAI “was not built right [the] first time around,” so it’s 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, all as SpaceX is reportedly planning to go public .
Kroiss and Nordeen both reported directly to Musk, according to BI, with Kroiss leading the company’s pretraining team, while Nordeen was Musk’s “right-hand operator.” Nordeen reportedly came to xAI from Tesla, and was involved in planning major layoffs at Twitter after Musk acquired the company in 2022.
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