Elon Musk’s xAI Co-Founder Leaves Company Abruptly

This is a major loss for xAI.

A co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI has announced he’s leaving the company.

Co-founder Tony Wu announced he’s leaving the company, marking the 4th co-founder to leave the artificial intelligence company in the last year.

CNBC reported the following details on Wu’s sudden 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.

Take a look at Wu’s announcement below:

I resigned from xAI today.

This company – and the family we became – will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together.

It's time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed…

— Yuhuai (Tony) Wu (@Yuhu_ai_) February 10, 2026

Full text:

I resigned from xAI today.

This company – and the family we became – will stay with me forever. I will deeply miss the people, the warrooms, and all those battles we have fought together.

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It’s time for my next chapter. It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.

Thank you to the entire xAI family. Onward. 🚀

And to Elon thank you for believing in the mission and for the ride of a lifetime.

Last week, Elon Musk reported that SpaceX acquired xAI.

Fox Business reported more on the deal:

Elon Musk’s SpaceX said Monday it is acquiring artificial-intelligence startup xAI, a move that significantly expands the rocket and satellite company’s ambitions in data centers and advanced computing.

The deal brings together SpaceX’s launch and satellite operations with the fast-growing AI company, giving Musk tighter control over the infrastructure, power demands and computing capacity that increasingly define competition in artificial intelligence.

The transaction values SpaceX at roughly $1 trillion and xAI at about $250 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, underscoring the scale of the combined enterprise.

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SpaceX said in a statement that the acquisition was driven by expectations that global demand for AI computing will soon outpace available electricity and cooling capacity on Earth.

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