{"id":8320,"date":"2026-02-10T16:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/elon-musks-xai-loses-co-founder-tony-wu-in-latest-senior-departure\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:40:06","slug":"elon-musks-xai-loses-co-founder-tony-wu-in-latest-senior-departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/elon-musks-xai-loses-co-founder-tony-wu-in-latest-senior-departure\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s xAI loses co-founder Tony Wu in latest senior departure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"SpecialReportArticle-ArticleBody-6\" data-module=\"ArticleBody\" data-test=\"articleBody-2\" data-analytics=\"SpecialReportArticle-articleBody-6-2\"><span class=\"HighlightShare-hidden\" style=\"top:0;left:0\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"InlineImage-imageEmbed\" id=\"ArticleBody-InlineImage-107343529\" data-test=\"InlineImage\">\n<div class=\"InlineImage-wrapper\">\n<div>\n<p>Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/elon-musk\/\">Elon Musk&#8217;s<\/a> xAI has lost another founding member.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Wu announced late on Monday that he resigned from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/\">artificial intelligence<\/a> startup, becoming the latest co-founder to leave the company. Others, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/08\/13\/elon-musks-xai-loses-co-founder-igor-babuschkin-for-venture-firm.html\">Igor Babuschkin<\/a>, Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, have also departed, and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TheGregYang\/status\/2013652609455006006?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Greg Yang<\/a> announced last month that he would be stepping back from his role to focus on his battle with Lyme disease.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s time for my next chapter,&#8221; Wu wrote in <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Yuhu_ai_\/status\/2021113745024614671?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a post<\/a> on X. &#8220;It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what&#8217;s possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wu&#8217;s departure comes as xAI faces a consumer backlash and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/01\/05\/india-eu-investigate-musks-x-after-grok-created-deepfake-child-porn.html\">regulatory probes<\/a> in multiple countries. The company&#8217;s Grok AI chatbot and image generator allowed mass-creation and syndication of non-consensual, explicit, deepfake images that were based on photos of real people, including children.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-7\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TSLA\/\">Tesla<\/a><span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> CEO Musk launched xAI in 2023 alongside 11 other people in an effort to compete with rivals like OpenAI and <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-8\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/GOOGL\/\">Google<\/a><span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>. The company&#8217;s stated goal was to &#8220;understand the true nature of the universe,&#8221; according to its website at the time. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Musk announced that his rocket company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/02\/07\/elon-musk-wants-to-be-a-trillionaire-how-spacex-xai-tesla-can-get-him-there.html\">SpaceX<\/a> acquired<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/02\/02\/elon-musk-spacex-xai-ipo.html\"> xAI<\/a> ahead of what could be a potentially massive IPO. The record-setting transaction is the largest merger of all time and values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/02\/03\/musk-xai-spacex-biggest-merger-ever.html\">documents viewed<\/a> by CNBC.<\/p>\n<p>Musk previously merged xAI with X in a multibillion-dollar deal he announced last March.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211;CNBC&#8217;a Lora Kolodny contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>WATCH:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/02\/03\/spacex-takes-on-xai-cash-burn-after-merger.html\">SpaceX takes on xAI cash burn after merger<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108260874\">\n<div role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" id=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108260874\" class=\"PlaceHolder-wrapper\" data-vilynx-id=\"7000402742\" data-test=\"VideoPlaceHolder\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-videoEmbed\" id=\"InlineVideo-0\" data-test=\"InlineVideo\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-inlineThumbnailContainer\"><span class=\"InlineVideo-videoButton\"\/><span\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images Elon Musk&#8217;s xAI has lost another founding member. Tony Wu announced late on Monday that he resigned from the artificial intelligence startup, becoming the latest co-founder to leave the company. Others, including Igor Babuschkin, Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, have also departed, and Greg Yang announced last month [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[558,1036,199,1491,5114,306,298,300,723,1189,307,4566,301,304,193,5383,12043],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/image.cnbcfm.com\/api\/v1\/image\/107343529-1701809051335-gettyimages-1822089037-arriens-leadingt231204_np7br.jpeg?v=1701809103&w=1920&h=1080","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo5.dedicatedhost247.com\/zexo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}