Musk reorganizes xAI team amid co-founders’ departures as SpaceX merger sets stage for trillion-dollar IPO

Elon Musk moved quickly this week to reset xAI’s leadership, tightening control of the artificial intelligence startup just days after folding it into SpaceX and tying its future to one of the most ambitious IPO plans in tech history.

The shakeup comes at a sensitive moment. SpaceX said on February 2 that it has acquired xAI, combining rockets, satellites, and artificial intelligence into a single entity valued at roughly $1.25 trillion, with a public market listing in sight later this year. The deal turns xAI from a standalone AI lab into a core pillar of Musk’s space ambitions, including plans to place data centers beyond Earth.

Behind the scenes, the changes have been abrupt. On Tuesday, xAI co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba confirmed they had resigned from the company they launched with Musk less than three years ago. Their exits add to a growing list of departures that has cut the original founding group roughly in half.

Inside Elon Musk’s xAI Shakeup: Co-Founders Depart After SpaceX Merger

Wu joined xAI in 2023 after leaving Google and led Grok’s reasoning work. He reported directly to Musk and played a central role in shaping the system behind the company’s flagship chatbot. No explanation accompanied his announcement.

Ba followed soon after, writing that 2026 would be the “busiest and most consequential year for the future of our species.” Like Wu, he did not explain what drove the decision. A snapshot of xAI’s founding roster now shows several early leaders no longer attached to the project.

Musk addressed the leadership changes directly in a post on X.

“xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution,” Musk said, adding that it “unfortunately required parting ways with some people.”

He expanded on that point in a longer post.

“xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism. This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors. We are hiring aggressively. Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you.”

xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism.

This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors.

We are… https://t.co/kfmSmBlieb

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2026

The turnover has drawn attention far beyond Silicon Valley gossip. xAI is no longer pitching itself as an AI upstart racing larger rivals. It now sits directly inside Musk’s broader industrial vision, tied to orbital infrastructure, satellite networks, and a future public offering that blends aerospace and large-scale compute into a single story.

Internally, Musk told staff that xAI has been reorganized around four application groups. Co-founder Guodong Zhang will lead the Imagine team, focused on creative and generative systems. Toby Pohlen will run the Macrohard group, which oversees internal automation and operational tooling.

For Musk, the message is clear. xAI is entering a phase where speed and alignment matter more than academic pedigree or founding titles. With SpaceX setting the pace and public markets watching closely, the experiment is shifting from a research-heavy startup into something closer to infrastructure for Musk’s next act.