Image: © Ascannio/Stock.adobe.com The fifth and sixth founder departure from xAI comes just after SpaceX acquired the company for $250bn. xAI co-founders Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu are the latest to leave the AI start-up, meaning only half of the company’s co-founders remain. The fifth and sixth founder departure from the Elon Musk-owned AI start-up comes just after Musk’s other venture SpaceX acquired xAI for a reported $250bn. The combined business makes SpaceX the world’s largest private company, leagues ahead in valuation of the likes of OpenAI and TikTok-parent ByteDance. In a post on the Musk-owned social media platform X yesterday (10 February), Ba said: “It’s time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species.” While Wu’s statement on X did not clarify what his plans post xAI will be. Both Ba and Wu attended the University of Toronto, and Wu worked as a research scientist intern at OpenAI and a research scientist at Google before co-founding xAI in 2023. Previously departing xAI co-founders include Kyle Kosic, who left in 2024, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025. Greg Yang, another co-founder, announced he would be stepping down last month after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. The remaining six co-founders include Elon Musk, Manuel Kroiss, Zihang Dai, Toby Pohlen, Guodong Zhang and Ross Nordeen. xAI, the parent company behind X and AI chatbot Grok, has come under major scrutiny in recent weeks after an update to Grok allowed X users to prompt the AI bot to undress people in pictures and videos. A New York Times report found that millions of such pieces of content were generated on X.