According to according to Business Insider, eight key executives, including the project’s founders, have left the company. The last to leave was 36-year-old engineer Ross Nordin.
The publication emphasizes the unhealthy situation inside the company, stating in the first sentence of the April 4 article that Nordin was not even fired in the usual sense of the word. He was simply suddenly disconnected from the company’s systems last week and disappeared from an extensive group chat with CEO Ilon Musk and hundreds of other engineers.
Ross Nordin, one of the billionaire’s closest aides, became the latest non-Mask co-founder to leave the startup, and the eighth to leave in less than three months. This is an unusually quick disbanding of the founding team at a critical time in the company’s history, Business Insider notes.
The team’s departure comes at a time when Musk is accelerating the integration of the AI startup with other assets, most notably SpaceX, which went public at an IPO with a valuation of up to $1.75 trillion.
“Reshuffling among the xAI co-founders is classic Ilon Musk style,” the publication concludes.
A trillion-dollar bet and cracks in the foundation
The crisis at xAI is unfolding against the backdrop of Musk’s biggest strategic U-turn – the shift from traditional industries to artificial intelligence infrastructure. In this model, xAI is responsible for algorithm development, SpaceX for global data transmission via satellite networks, and Tesla for application solutions including autonomous driving and robotics.
This approach effectively forms a vertically integrated AI ecosystem capable of competing with market leaders including OpenAI and Google.
However, a mass exodus of top management could slow down the implementation of this strategy and increase investor concerns. Against the backdrop of increasingly competitive and capital-intensive AI development, the sustainability of teams is becoming a critical factor.
As a result, despite the scale of ambition and potential trillion-dollar valuation, the current situation underscores a key risk for Musk’s empire: in the race for leadership in artificial intelligence, not only technology and capital, but also the ability to retain key people are crucial.
