Musk Says xAI 'Was Not Built Right First Time Around,' Rebuilding From Foundations
# Musk Says xAI 'Was Not Built Right First Time Around,' Rebuilding From Foundations Elon Musk is rebuilding xAI—again. "xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up," Musk said Thursday on X. It's the latest chapter in a turbulent period for the AI st...
Musk Says xAI 'Was Not Built Right First Time Around,' Rebuilding From Foundations
Elon Musk is rebuilding xAI—again.
"xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up," Musk said Thursday on X.
It's the latest chapter in a turbulent period for the AI startup. Of the original 11 co-founders who launched xAI with Musk three years ago, only two remain. The departures include co-founders Zihang Dai and Guodong Zhang, who left this week after Musk complained that xAI's AI coding tools weren't effectively competing with Claude Code or Codex.
The company held an all-hands meeting on Wednesday focused on how to catch up—Musk predicted they'd be competitive by mid-year.
The personnel overhaul extends beyond this week. A month ago, 11 senior engineers—including two co-founders—left after Musk described a reorganization. The Financial Times reported that SpaceX and Tesla executives have parachuted in to evaluate employees and fire those who don't make the grade.
On the hiring side, there's a glimmer of hope: Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, who led product engineering at Cursor, are joining xAI.
LinkedIn reports xAI has just over 5,000 employees, compared to more than 7,500 at OpenAI and more than 4,700 at Anthropic.
