Billionaire Elon Musk mentioned he restructured xAI, his synthetic intelligence startup, following the exit of two of its co-founders earlier this week.
XAI might be organized in 4 core areas, the billionaire instructed workers in a gathering on Wednesday: Grok’s chatbot and voice product; Coding; the Think about video product; and Macrohard, an AI software program firm run by digital brokers. Musk introduced the plan in an all-hands assembly with xAI staffers, which he made public on the social community X.
“What issues is velocity and acceleration,” he instructed workers. “In case you are shifting quicker, you’ll be the chief.” He additionally thanked the individuals who have departed the corporate.
The assembly adopted the back-to-back departures of Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, two of the startup’s co-founders, together with a handful of different workers members who’ve left over the previous few days.
Aman Madaan, who joined xAI in 2024, is main the principle chatbot and voice division. Within the assembly, he famous that xAI is rapidly creating its fashions, spurred on by the success of OpenAI’s voice mannequin. “We had nothing, however in six months we developed it from scratch,” he mentioned.
Co-founder Manuel Kroiss will lead the coding group, whereas Guodong Zhang, one other of the co-founders, might be overseeing video technology, whereas serving to with coding. Toby Pohlen, additionally a part of the founding group, might be in command of Macrohard, a division named as a play on Microsoft Corp.
“Many of the AI compute is gonna be understanding real-time video technology,” Musk mentioned. “And we anticipate to be leaders in that.”
All of them emphasised that xAI is seeking to rent.
Twelve unique xAI co-founders, together with Musk, launched the corporate in 2023. Ba and Wu are the fifth and sixth from that group to exit prior to now two years. Kyle Kosic left in 2024, adopted by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025. Greg Yang, one other co-founder, mentioned final month that he would step again from his position after being recognized with Lyme illness.
The exits observe xAI’s current merger with SpaceX, a transfer that valued the mixed firm at $1.25 trillion, Bloomberg reported. That deal might ease a funding crunch for xAI, which has been elevating giant sums of capital because it burns by means of money in its bid to construct out knowledge facilities, purchase costly computing chips and pay for expertise.
xAI has a big Colossus knowledge middle website in Memphis, Tennessee, and is planning an growth of the complicated. The corporate has already bought a 3rd constructing within the space that can carry its computing capability to nearly 2 gigawatts, Musk mentioned late final 12 months. That growth, which is technically throughout state traces in Mississippi, will embrace an funding north of $20 billion. The brand new constructing, which Musk has dubbed Macroharder, would require 10,000 to twenty,000 GB300 methods, Musk mentioned within the name.
Nikita Bier, who’s in command of X’s product, mentioned that the social community and its adjoining apps, together with Grok, have reached about 1 billion customers. January was the perfect month ever when it comes to engagement for X, he mentioned. He additionally famous that new customers spend 55% extra time a day within the app than they did six months in the past. The app “has been rebuilt to be higher than ever,” and is now producing $1 billion in annual recurring income tied to subscriptions, he mentioned.
Musk mentioned the corporate will launching a brand new X Chat app for individuals who solely wish to use it for messaging. He reiterated that he received’t be including adverts to Grok. X Cash, an initiative the social community has been engaged on for years and that’ll be used to ship cash throughout the app, might be accessible to a restricted variety of exterior check customers within the coming months, he mentioned. “It’ll be the place the place all the cash is. It’s going to be a recreation changer,” Musk mentioned.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
Key Takeaways
- Musk’s restructuring goals to enhance effectivity and velocity in AI improvement.
- xAI is specializing in 4 core areas: chatbot, coding, video technology, and software program.
- The corporate is actively hiring and increasing its knowledge middle capabilities.