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Tag: Mike Liberatore

  • Elon Musk Loses Half of xAI’s Founding Team—Where They’ve Gone Next

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    Elon Musk’s xAI has lost half of its 12-person founding team. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

    Just days after Elon Musk merged his A.I. startup, xAI, with SpaceX in preparation for a widely anticipated trillion-dollar IPO later this year, two of xAI’s founding employees—Yuhuai (Tony) Wu and Jimmy Ba—announced their resignations. That means half of xAI’s founding team has now left the company barely three years after its launch. Musk framed the staff exodus as growing pains. “As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism. This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors,” he wrote on X yesterday (Feb. 11).

    Wu and Ba’s exits appeared amicable. But lower-level employees have been more candid about internal tensions at the Musk-run startup. Several members of xAI’s technical staff have also left in recent weeks, according to their posts on X and LinkedIn.

    “All A.I. labs are building the exact same thing, and it’s boring,” said Vahid Kazemi, who worked on xAI’s audio models, in a post on X. “I think there’s room for more creativity. So, I’m starting something new.”

    In an interview with NBC News, Kazemi also criticized the company’s working culture, saying he regularly worked 12-hour days, including holidays and weekends.

    Launched in March 2023 with a roster of industry veterans from companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla, xAI will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. The new iteration of SpaceX faces no shortage of challenges: Grok continues to face legal scrutiny, while Musk’s leadership style remains a point of contention.

    Here are the co-founders and notable leaders who have left xAI so far—and where they are now.

    Jimmy Ba

    Jimmy Ba, who led A.I. safety at xAI, announced his exit on Feb. 10. A professor at the University of Toronto who studied under A.I. pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, Ba’s research played a key role in shaping Grok’s development.

    “So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close as a friend of the team,” Ba wrote on X. He hasn’t announced his next move, but added that “2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species.”

    Despite Ba’s departure, Dan Hendrycks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, remains a safety advisor for xAI.

    Yuhuai (Tony) Wu

    Tony Wu, a former research scientist at Google and postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, announced his departure from xAI on Feb. 9.

    Wu led xAI’s reasoning team. “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,” he wrote on X.

    Wu has not disclosed his next role. Co-founders Guodong Zhang and Manuel Kroiss remain at xAI and are helping lead the company’s reorganization.

    Mike Liberatore

    While not a founding member, Mike Liberatore joined xAI as chief financial officer in April 2025, just one month after xAI acquired X in a deal that valued the combined company at $113 billion.

    Liberatore, formerly a finance executive at Airbnb and SquareTrade, left after only three months. He now works as a business finance officer at OpenAI, according to LinkedIn.

    Musk replaced Liberatore with ex-Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong. Armstrong advised Musk on his Twitter (now X) acquisition in 2022 and later served as a senior advisor at the Office of Personnel Management during Musk’s controversial tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

    Greg Yang

    Greg Yang spent nearly six years as a researcher at Microsoft before joining xAI’s founding team. He left the company in January due to health complications from Lyme disease.

    “Likely I contracted Lyme a long time ago, but until I pushed myself hard building xAI and weakened my immune system, the symptoms weren’t noticeable,” Yang wrote on X. He continues to advise xAI in an informal capacity.

    Igor Babuschkin

    Igor Babuschkin, a former research engineer at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, was a co-founder and key engineering lead at xAI. Widely known as the primary developer behind Grok, Babuschkin left in July 2025 to start his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, focused on A.I. research and startups.

    Christian Szegedy

    Christian Szegedy spent 12 years at Google before joining xAI as a founding research scientist. He left xAI in February 2025 to become chief scientist at superintelligence cloud company Morph Labs.

    More than a year later, he departed that role to found mathematical A.I. startup Math Inc. in September, according to his LinkedIn.

    “I left xAI in the last week of February and I am on good terms with the team. IMO, xAI has a bright future,” Szegedy wrote on X.

    Other senior engineers and scientists at xAI include Yasemin Yesiltepe, Zhuoyi (Zoey) Huang and Yao Fu.

    Kyle Kosic

    Kyle Kosic left OpenAI in early 2023 after two years to co-found xAI, where he served as engineering infrastructure lead. He departed about a year later, in April 2024, to return to OpenAI as a technical staff member.

    Kosic was the first co-founder to leave xAI and did not issue a public statement. It is unclear who now leads xAI’s engineering infrastructure, though another co-founder, Ross Nordeen, remains the company’s technical program manager after previously holding the same role at Tesla.

    Elon Musk Loses Half of xAI’s Founding Team—Where They’ve Gone Next

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    Rachel Curry

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  • Elon Musk’s xAI Is Redefining Data Annotation—an Unglamorous But Vital Job in A.I.

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    Elon Musk’s A.I. firm is scaling back on “generalist A.I. tutors.” Allison Robbert/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

    Data annotation may not be the most glamorous job in Silicon Valley, but it’s indispensable for A.I. developers and has made companies like Scale AI multibillion-dollar ventures overnight. Training large language models requires armies of humans to label text, images and video so A.I. systems can learn from them. Now, Elon Musk’s xAI is reshaping how that work is done by shifting away from general contractors and toward experts in specialized fields it calls “A.I. tutors.”

    In that vein, xAI recently laid off at least 500 generalist annotators, as reported by Business Insider. The cuts affected about one-third of the company’s 1,500-person annotation team. In emails cited by the outlet, executives described a “strategic pivot” toward hiring domain experts as specialist A.I. tutors.

    “Specialist A.I. tutors at xAI are adding huge value,” said xAI in a Sep. 12 post on X that declared the company will “immediately surge” its specialist A.I. team by tenfold. The company did not respond to requests for comment from Observer.

    What data annotation is and why it matters

    Human annotators play a crucial role in fine-tuning raw data, ensuring it can be used effectively to train models. But the work has long been fraught. Firms that outsource this work, like Scale AI, have faced lawsuits from contractors alleging wage theft, misclassification and exposure to disturbing content without safeguards.

    Unlike rivals that rely heavily on third parties, xAI employs a large in-house annotation team. Other A.I. leaders—including OpenAI and Google—have worked with Scale in the past, though both distanced themselves from the firm after Meta took a 49 percent stake and hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence division. Today, many also contract with competitor Surge AI, which counts Anthropic and Microsoft among its clients.

    xAI itself has previously tapped third-party annotators, but is now doubling down on its own staff. The company has posted openings for more than a dozen specialist tutor roles spanning A.I. safety, data science, STEM, finance, Japanese and even “memes and headline commentary.” The latter position involves improving Grok’s ability to “recognize and analyze memes, trolling and virality mechanisms,” according to the listing.

    Qualifications for these roles are steep. For STEM specialists, candidates must hold a master’s or Ph.D. in a relevant field—or have earned medals in competitions like the International Mathematical Olympiad. xAI says tutors can work part-time or full-time and earn between $45 and $100 per hour.

    The changes come as xAI faces wider turnover beyond its annotation team. In July, the company’s head of infrastructure, Uday Ruddarraju, left for rival OpenAI. Co-founder Igor Babushkin departed the following month to launch a venture capital firm. And in September, Mike Liberatore resigned after just three months as chief financial officer.

    Elon Musk’s xAI Is Redefining Data Annotation—an Unglamorous But Vital Job in A.I.

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    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Elon Musk’s xAI Faces High Exec Turnover as CFO and Key Leaders Step Down

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    Elon Musk’s A.I. firm is best known for its Grok chatbot. Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

    Mike Liberatore, chief financial officer of Elon Musk’s xAI, has left the company after just three months, the Wall Street Journal first reported. His exit adds to a wave of high-profile turnover at the startup. Launched by Musk in 2023, xAI is best known for its Grok chatbot. The company’s technology has quickly caught up to competitors, but Grok has also made headlines for controversial outputs and now for a string of executive departures.

    Liberatore joined xAI in April after eight years at Airbnb, where he was vice president of finance and corporate development. He also previously worked at PayPal and eBay. At xAI, he was reportedly involved in fundraising and oversaw data center expansion efforts in Memphis, Tenn. Liberatore left in July, according to the Journal.

    Around the same time, Raghu Rao, xAI’s former commercial lead, also departed. Rao had joined in April following roles at Zoom, Ernst & Young and Deloitte.

    Another loss came this summer when Robert Keele, a member of xAI’s legal team, stepped away from his role as general counsel. “Working with Elon on this tech, at this time, was the adventure of a lifetime,” Keele wrote in an Aug. 5 X post. He said he was leaving to spend more time with his family. His farewell included a Grok-generated video of a man in a suit shoveling coal, which Keele said was the chatbot’s response to the prompt: “What’s it like to lead legal at xAI?”

    Musk built xAI in just a few years with a founding team largely drawn from OpenAI and Google. Of the dozen co-founders, at least three have since left. Kyle Kosic is now at OpenAI, while Christian Szegedy became chief scientist at Morph Labs. Both departed last year.

    The most recent co-founder to exit was Igor Babushkin, who led engineering teams at the firm before leaving in August to launch his own venture capital firm focused on A.I. startups and agentic systems. “We wouldn’t be here without you,” said Musk in an Aug. 13 post responding to Babushkin’s announcement.

    Not every departure has been as cordial. Last month, xAI filed a lawsuit against Xuechen Li, a former member of xAI’s technical team, accusing him of stealing trade secrets to take to a new role at OpenAI. Li, who joined xAI in February 2024 and helped develop Grok, allegedly uploaded confidential data before accepting an offer from OpenAI in August. On Sept. 3, xAI won a court order temporarily blocking Li from starting the new job.

    Elon Musk’s xAI Faces High Exec Turnover as CFO and Key Leaders Step Down

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    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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