Yet another co-founder departs Elon Musk's xAI

Source: Ars Technica

Recent high‑profile xAI departures

Other recent high‑profile xAI departures include general counsel Robert Keele, communications executives Dave Heinzinger and John Stoll, head of product engineering Haofei Wang, and CFO Mike Liberatore, who left for a role at OpenAI after just 102 days of what he called “120+ hour weeks.”

A different company

Wu leaves a company that is in a very different place than it was when he helped create it in 2023. His departure comes just days after CEO Elon Musk merged xAI with SpaceX, a move Musk says will allow for orbiting data centers and, eventually, “scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” But some see the move as more of a financial‑engineering play, combining xAI’s nearly $1 billion a year in losses and SpaceX’s roughly $8 billion in annual profits into a single, more IPO‑ready entity.

Musk previously rolled social‑media network X (formerly Twitter) into a unified entity with xAI back in March. At the time of the deal, X was valued at $33 billion, 25 percent less than Musk paid for the social network in 2022.

xAI has faced a fresh wave of criticism in recent months over Grok’s willingness to generate sexualized images of minors. That has led to an investigation by California’s attorney general and a police raid of the company’s Paris offices.