The cracks are showing in Elon Musk's freshly minted mega-merger. Two of xAI's co-founders, Yuhai (Tony) Wu and Jimmy Ba, abruptly left the company this week following the announcement of the $1.25 trillion xAI-SpaceX merger, the biggest consolidation in tech history. The departures, announced via cryptic posts on X, signal growing turmoil within the combined entity as key technical leaders jump ship to launch competing AI ventures.
The biggest merger in history is already losing some of its brightest minds. Days after Elon Musk announced the record-shattering $1.25 trillion combination of xAI, SpaceX, and social platform X, two of xAI's founding team members have headed for the exits, casting doubt on whether the sprawling new entity can hold together its technical talent.
Yuhai (Tony) Wu broke the news first, posting on X that it was "time for [his] next chapter," according to his departure announcement. Hours later, fellow co-founder Jimmy Ba followed suit with his own cryptic message, saying it was "time to recalibrate [his] gradient on the big picture," he wrote on the platform. The machine learning jargon barely masked what insiders are calling a mass exodus.
Both Wu and Ba were among the original team that launched xAI in 2023, bringing deep expertise in large language models and neural network architecture. Their simultaneous departures aren't isolated incidents. Multiple other xAI employees have quietly announced they're leaving to start their own AI companies, a pattern that suggests the merger has created internal chaos rather than the synergy Musk promised investors.
The $1.25 trillion valuation announced last week by CNBC made headlines as the largest corporate combination ever attempted. The deal theoretically creates a vertically integrated powerhouse that can train AI models using SpaceX's satellite data, deploy them through X's social platform, and leverage combined computing resources. But the strategy only works if the technical teams building these systems stick around.
