All 11 xAI Co-Founders Have Now Departed Elon Musk's AI Company

All eleven co-founders of Elon Musk's xAI have departed the company, with Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen leaving last in March 2026, following earlier exits including Jimmy Ba who resigned within 24 hours of Tony Wu's February 10, 2026 departure. The exodus occurs as Musk publicly admitted on March 13, 2026 that xAI's coding tools were not competitive with Anthropic's Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex and that the company needed to be rebuilt from its foundations. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2, 2026 in an all-stock transaction valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, the largest corporate merger by valuation in history. Tesla shareholders are suing Musk for breach of fiduciary duty over Tesla's $2 billion investment in xAI's Series E funding round, while competitors like Meta offer AI researchers compensation packages worth up to $300 million over four years.

Complete departure of all eleven co-founders from xAI

• ▪By mid-March 2026, only Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen remained as xAI co-founders
• ▪Jimmy Ba resigned from xAI within 24 hours of Tony Wu's departure announcement
• ▪Manuel Kroiss, who led the xAI pretraining team, departed xAI in March 2026
• ▪Jimmy Ba co-authored the 2014 Adam optimisation paper, which has more than 95,000 citations
• ▪Tony Wu announced his departure from xAI on February 10, 2026

SpaceX acquisition and corporate restructuring amid talent exodus

• ▪SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2, 2026 in an all-stock transaction
• ▪SpaceX is preparing for a potential IPO in mid-2026 that could target a $1.75 trillion valuation
• ▪xAI's Series E funding round valued xAI at approximately $230 billion
• ▪The SpaceX acquisition of xAI valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion
• ▪Tesla shareholders are suing Elon Musk for breach of fiduciary duty over Tesla's $2 billion investment in xAI
• ▪Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI's Series E funding round in January 2026
• ▪The SpaceX-xAI merger created a combined entity worth $1.25 trillion

Musk's admission of product failure and need for complete rebuild

• ▪Elon Musk stated on March 13, 2026 that xAI's AI coding tools did not work
• ▪Elon Musk stated on March 13, 2026 that xAI's coding tools were not competitive with Anthropic's Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex
• ▪Elon Musk stated on March 13, 2026 that xAI's underlying system needed to be rebuilt

Pattern of leadership attrition across Musk's companies

• ▪Twitter lost the majority of its senior leadership within months of Elon Musk's 2022 acquisition
• ▪Twitter lost roughly 80 percent of its workforce within months of Elon Musk's 2022 acquisition

Perspective of Tesla shareholders

• ▪Tesla shareholders allege Elon Musk breached fiduciary duty by directing $2 billion of Tesla funds into xAI

Perspective of Departing xAI co-founders

• ▪Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen remained at xAI longer than the other nine co-founders before departing in March 2026