Jimmy Ba, a cofounder of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, announced his departure from the company on Tuesday, marking the second high-level exit in less than 48 hours.
Business Insider reports that Jimmy Ba, a cofounder of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, announced his departure from the company on Tuesday, marking the second high-level exit in less than 48 hours. Ba’s resignation follows the Monday night departure of fellow cofounder Tony Wu, raising questions about stability within the leadership team of the AI company.
In a statement posted on X, Ba wrote, “It’s time to recalibrate my gradient on the big picture. 2026 is gonna be insane and likely the busiest (and most consequential) year for the future of our species.” The cryptic message offered little explanation for his decision to leave the company he helped establish.
Ba held a significant position within xAI’s organizational structure, reporting directly to Elon Musk. He was responsible for managing a substantial portion of the company’s operations until late last year, when his duties were redistributed. Several of his responsibilities were divided between two other cofounders, Tony Wu and Guodong Zhang, according to individuals familiar with the internal reorganization.
The departing cofounder also previously led a team that supervised more than a thousand AI tutors, based on an organizational chart from earlier last year. This particular role was reassigned to Diego Pasini in September, marking an earlier shift in Ba’s responsibilities within the company.
Ba’s exit comes just one day after Wu announced his resignation from the AI startup on Monday evening. Wu’s Slack account was reportedly deactivated shortly before his departure announcement, suggesting a swift transition. Prior to Wu’s departure, xAI underwent another internal restructuring that saw many of his responsibilities transferred to Zhang.
The dual departures represent a significant blow to xAI’s founding team. Musk launched the artificial intelligence company in 2023 alongside 11 other founders, creating an initial team of 12. With Ba and Wu’s departures, six of these original founders have now left the organization. Notably, five of these six exits have occurred within the past year alone, indicating an accelerating pattern of leadership turnover.
Beyond his work at xAI, Ba maintains an academic career as an assistant professor in the computer science department at the University of Toronto. His academic credentials include a Ph.D. from the same institution, where he studied under Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner frequently referred to as the “godfather of AI.” This academic foundation positioned Ba as one of the more technically credentialed members of xAI’s founding team.
Musk established xAI as a competitor in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape, positioning it as an alternative to what he has characterized as “woke” chatbots, specifically referencing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Throughout the past year, the company has developed a reputation for controversial approaches and products that challenge conventional boundaries in AI development.
Last July, xAI introduced a sexually explicit AI companion named “Ani” generating immediate attention and controversy. The company’s Grok chatbot also made headlines when it produced antisemitic rants, raising concerns about content moderation and safety protocols within the platform.
More recently, xAI faced intense criticism after its Grok chatbot began generating nonconsensual sexual images of real individuals including children. As Breitbart News previously reported:
In a series of apologetic posts on X, Grok explained that “lapses in safeguards” had allowed the disturbing content to be generated by the AI model in response to user prompts over a period of several days. The offending images were subsequently taken down after being identified.
“We’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them,” Grok stated on Friday. “Child sexual abuse material is illegal and prohibited.”
In a major development announced last week, Musk revealed plans to merge xAI with SpaceX, his rocket and space exploration company. This merger announcement comes as SpaceX is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering scheduled for this year. Industry analysts and financial reports suggest the IPO could value SpaceX at approximately $1.5 trillion, making it one of the most valuable privately held companies in history.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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