Tech

Elon Musk holds xAI all-hands meeting after a wave of staff departures

Elon Musk
Elon Musk is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft Jae C. Hong/AP
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XAI brought staffers together for an all-hands on Tuesday night, shortly after the company lost its second cofounder in less than 48 hours.

Musk did not directly address the departures of company cofounders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, but thanked those who had left for their contributions to the company.

Musk said that the company would continue to carry on despite the recent exits, and said that the staff who had left were not necessary for the future of xAI.

The xAI CEO also discussed a restructuring, though it's unclear what it could look like. Wu and Ba both left the company shortly after their responsibilities were changed, Business Insider previously reported.

The all-hands meeting also addressed Musk's plans for data centers in space. Musk has said SpaceX's recent acquisition of xAI will allow the company to more quickly deploy cosmic data centers, and previously discussed having Tesla's Optimus robot man the facilities.

The New York Times was the first to report on the meeting.

Over the last few days, several other staffers posted that they had left the company.

A spokesperson for xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

XAI had previously scheduled an all-hands meeting for last week, after it was announced that SpaceX had acquired xAI. That meeting was canceled at the last minute, people with knowledge of the event said.

In a Q&A sent to staff about the acquisition, the company said the two companies would mostly stay separate in their work and branding, at least for the time being, Business Insider previously reported. The combined company continues to prepare for a "possible IPO in 2026," according to the memo.

"Whether it actually happens, when it happens, and at what valuation are still highly uncertain," it said.

SpaceX, which Musk founded in 2002, has reportedly been gearing up for an initial public offering that could value it at $1.5 trillion.

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Grace Kay
Grace Kay was a Correspondent on Business Insider’s enterprise desk, where she covered the inner workings of Tesla, Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, and the broader robotics and electric vehicle industries.Her stories have been cited by multiple publications, including Reuters, Bloomberg, and CNBC. Before joining Business Insider, she worked at Bloomberg and Forbes.Tesla: Inside 'Project Rodeo,' the Tesla effort pushing the limits of self-driving technologyInternal Tesla salary database shows Elon Musk's strategy: Lower salaries, bigger stock grantsTesla tells staff it plans to roll out its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekendTesla has been working on modified Model Ys for its Robotaxi programTesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train self-driving softwareAshok Elluswamy is the most powerful Tesla executive you've never heard ofxAI:Internal documents reveal how Elon Musk's xAI trains Grok to be the anti-woke chatbotXAI's Macrohard project stalls as Tesla ramps up a similar AI agent effortElon Musk's xAI plans to supply computing power to coding startup CursorWar rooms, group chats, and video games: Inside Elon Musk's AI startupBehind Grok's 'sexy' settings, workers review explicit and disturbing contentElon Musk's xAI lays off hundreds of workers tasked with training GrokEVs and robots:Fisker employees are fixing some customers' cars with parts from the company's vehicle 'graveyard,' sources sayFisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data showsInside the downfall of Henrik Fisker's second automotive startup, which just filed for bankruptcyInside the glass-walled Tesla lab where workers train the Optimus robot to act like a humanInside OpenAI's renewed push into robotics