Following a mass exodus that has seen at least seven of its initial co-founders leave, including most recently Zihang Dai, Elon Musk has apologized for not building xAI (X.AI) “right.”
“xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “The same thing happened with Tesla.” Musk followed that up with a post on Friday morning and apologized for the fact that “many talented people over the past few years were declined an offer or even an interview” with the generative artificial intelligence company. He added that he and another xAI executive, Baris Akis, are going through the company’s interview history and “reaching back out to promising candidates.”
Musk’s comments came hours after he said he expects Digital Optimus, a joint artificial intelligence project between Tesla (TSLA) and xAI, to be ready for users to experience in six months.
Dai’s departure, which was reported earlier this week, comes on the heels of the exits of other co-founders of the Grok AI chatbot maker, including Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu, and Greg Yang.
After Dai and Zhang’s exits, only two of the 11 people who started the company with Musk in 2023 — Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen — remain with xAI. Last month, SpaceX (SPACE) announced it was acquiring xAI in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25T.
In January, xAI closed a Series E funding round for $20B. The maker of the Grok chatbot did not disclose the valuation at the time, but previous reporting had indicated that the next funding round could value xAI at $230B.
Earlier this week, Tesla received clearance from the U.S. government to convert its investment in xAI into a stake in SpaceX. Tesla had previously invested $2B into xAI.