The wave of co-founder departures from Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is reportedly continuing. According to people familiar with the matter, Dai Zihang left xAI earlier this week. His xAI badge on his X profile has disappeared.
At the same time, people familiar with the matter said Zhang Guodong has told some people that he plans to leave the company in the next few days. However, he still has the xAI badge on his X profile.
Prior to this, several xAI co-founders had resigned, including Toby Pohlen, Jimmy Ba, Tony Wu and Greg Yang, who have left the company one after another since January this year.
After Dai Zihang and Zhang Guodong leave, of the 11 founding members who founded xAI with Musk in 2023, only two will remain in the company, namely Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen.
Zhang Guodong reports directly to Musk and is responsible for the company's two key projects: Grok Code and Grok Imagine. Previous reports stated that Zhang Guodong was given a larger scope of responsibilities at xAI earlier this year, shortly before Tony Wu left the company.
"Grok is still lagging behind in terms of programming capabilities," Musk said at the Abundance Conference on Wednesday.
"The reason I'm late is because I just had an all-hands meeting on programming, talking about all the things that need to be done to ultimately surpass our competitors in terms of programming capabilities. I think we're going to do that," he said.