Summary
Elon Musk has ordered a fresh round of job cuts at xAI that has led to the exit of additional founding team members, after he publicly criticized the performance of the company's coding division, the Financial Times reported on Friday. The departures come amid a broader management reorganization that preceded a planned initial public offering that could be among the largest on record.
Recent moves and management changes
Last month, xAI underwent a restructuring of its leadership. That overhaul occurred after Musk combined xAI with his rocket company SpaceX. As part of the response, Musk assigned personnel from SpaceX and Tesla to carry out audits inside xAI. According to the report, those auditors concluded that some employees' output did not meet expectations and terminated a number of positions on that basis.
Co-founder exits and reasons given
The Financial Times report identified co-founder Guodong Zhang, who led xAI's Imagine team, as informing colleagues that he would be departing. The report cites two people familiar with the decision, stating that Musk had blamed Zhang for issues with the coding product and removed him from his primary responsibilities prior to Zhang's departure. Zhang confirmed his exit in a post on X on Thursday.
Another co-founder, Zihang Dai, is reported to have left xAI earlier this week. Taken together, these exits reduce the number of remaining original founders from 12 to two at the three-year-old artificial intelligence firm that was established in March 2023.
Context retained from reporting
The sequence of changes - the merger with SpaceX, the management shake-up last month, the internal audits by SpaceX and Tesla personnel, and the resulting terminations - are presented in the report as the direct chain of events leading to the recent departures. The planned initial public offering remains the stated near-term corporate objective.
Implications for stakeholders
For employees and investors, the departures of multiple founders and a tightening of management are signals of intensified oversight and an active effort to address perceived shortfalls in execution. The report links those internal assessments to formal personnel actions taken after audits found some work to be inadequate.
What the reporting does and does not say
The account reproduces the sequence of management changes and personnel moves as described in the report. It does not provide additional detail beyond what was reported about the audits, individual performance assessments, or the timeline for the planned initial public offering.