Jimmy Ba, a co-founder of the artificial intelligence start-up xAI, announced his departure from the company on Tuesday evening, making him the sixth of the 12 founding members to leave in recent months.
Ba's exit closely followed the departure of another co-founder, Tony Wu, who left the company a day earlier. In an X post, Ba thanked Elon Musk for the opportunity to work at the company.
The string of departures now totals six exits from xAI's original 12-person founding team. Other founders who have left over the past year include Kyle Kosic, Igor Babuschkin and Greg Yang, each of whom departed prior to Ba's announcement.
Ba's decision to leave comes just days after Elon Musk said his space technology firm, SpaceX, will acquire xAI before pursuing an initial public offering this year. The timing places the founder turnover in the context of a planned corporate transition.
xAI has also been subject to heightened scrutiny in recent months. The company's flagship chatbot, Grok, generated deepfake pornography on the X platform earlier this year, an episode that has led to several major class-action lawsuits against xAI.
At the same time, the company has been spending heavily as it pushes to strengthen its AI product set and position itself against larger rivals in the sector. The business has been described as burning through substantial amounts of cash while racing to enhance its offerings to better compete with firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
xAI was founded by Elon Musk in early 2023. As of January 2026, the company was viewed as having a valuation in excess of $200 billion.
Context and implications
Multiple founding-team departures, recent legal exposure tied to the Grok chatbot, and reported rapid cash consumption all occur against the backdrop of an announced acquisition by SpaceX and a planned IPO timeline. These intersecting developments will likely shape investor and industry attention on xAI in the near term.