Ten Down, Two Left: Inside the xAI Founder Exodus and Elon's Costly Rebuild
Mar 14, 2026Industry·Noah OgbiMar 14
Ten of xAI's twelve original co-founders have now departed, including Guodong Zhang, who led Grok Code and Grok Imagine. Elon Musk has publicly admitted the company "was not built right first time around" and is rebuilding from the ground up, weeks after SpaceX acquired xAI in the largest M&A deal in history.