Elon Musk’s Xai Loses Co-Founder Igor Babuschkin
Elon Musk’s Xai, a startup founded in 2023 with a 12-person team, has lost one of its founding members. Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of the developer behind Grok, announced his departure from the company on August 13 to start his own risk capital company focused on AI startups. In a post on X, Babuschkin stated, “Today was my last day at XAI, the company where I started with Elon Musk in 2023.”
Musk reacted to Babuschkin’s departure by thanking him for his efforts and acknowledging that Xai “would not be here without you.” The billionaire founded the startup to prioritize the mission, accuracy, security, and further development of human skills. The XAI flagship is Grok, a KI chatbot that competes with other leading models in several industries. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Background and Experience
Babuschkin, who headed engineering teams in Xai, joined the company in May 2023 after earlier roles at Google Deepmind and Openai. He was trained as a physicist at Cern in Switzerland and TU Dortmund in Germany. He later developed an interest in advanced AI and connected with Musk over what he described as “a common vision of AI on humanity.”
The company’s early days were a challenge, Babuschkin admitted. “No, we told us that it was too late that it would be impossible to build a top AI company from scratch,” he wrote in a post on X. He shared how his team at Xai built the massive Memphis supercluster in just 120 days “by blood, sweat and tears.”
Controversies and Future Plans
Despite its scale, the Memphis Training Cluster has drawn local criticism for its emission-oriented gas turbines. GROK itself has also faced controversy, with reports that the chatbot made anti-Semitic comments and Musk repeated personal views in answers. Over the years, Babuschkin said he learned two important lessons from Musk: “To be fearless to roll up the sleeves to dig up the technical problems personally” and “to have a male feeling of urgency.”
His next step is to start Babuschkin Ventures, a company that will invest in startups and agents-KI systems, “which drive humanity and unlock the secrets of our universe” – a mission that reflects the stated goal of Xai “to understand the true nature of the universe.” The security of AI will be a central focus for the company, Babuschkin added.
Babuschkin is one of the few original members to leave Xai, which Musk founded with a team of 12, mostly drawn from Openai and Google Deepmind. Further departures include researchers Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, who left roles at Openai or Morph Labs last year, while most co-founders have remained.
Conclusion
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Source: observer.com
