XAI key figures flee, Elon Musk's AI ambitions suffer a severe blow

Author: Huálín Wǔwáng, GeekPark

Editor: Jingyu

Elon Musk, who is preparing to merge SpaceX and xAI to create a $1.25 trillion valuation AI giant in space, didn’t expect that not everyone could handle his big vision.

On February 10, 2026, local time, xAI co-founder Tony Wu announced his departure from Elon Musk’s AI company.

This is the second co-founder to leave xAI after Igor Babuschkin’s departure last August. Wu was responsible for AI reasoning capabilities—considered by the industry as a key technological focus for the next-generation AI systems’ core competitiveness.

A company founded just over two years ago, losing two co-founders in succession, is uncommon in Silicon Valley. More critically, this happened during a period of fierce AI competition and talent scarcity.

With founders leaving one after another, can Musk’s AI ambitions still continue?

1. The reasoning expert leaves

Tony Wu’s role at xAI is far more important than it appears on the surface.

As the head of reasoning capabilities, Wu reports directly to Musk. At this stage of AI development, reasoning ability is seen as the critical bridge between large models like GPT-4, Claude, and true “general artificial intelligence.”

Simply put, Wu was responsible for enabling AI to “think,” not just “remember and imitate.”

Losing Wu at this point is a fatal blow to xAI.

Tony Wu announced his departure on X｜Image source: X

From a technical perspective, breakthroughs in AI reasoning require long-term accumulation and continuous iteration. When a reasoning expert leaves, it’s not just the individual skills lost, but also the entire set of technical ideas, experimental data, and future R&D direction judgments. In the fast-paced AI industry, where progress is measured in months, losing a key technical leader often means at least six months of R&D stagnation.

What’s more worrying is the timing. OpenAI just released a new code model with significant breakthroughs in AI coding; Anthropic’s Claude is also performing increasingly well on reasoning tasks. Losing the core figure of the reasoning team at this critical juncture could cause xAI to fall behind in the most competitive technical race.

Some developers on X have bluntly said: “Losing Tony Wu is like Tesla losing its battery tech lead. The company may still be running on the surface, but its core competitiveness has been impacted.”

Wu is not the only one. In fact, over the past year, five out of the twelve founding team members of xAI have left—nearly half, with efficiency comparable to Elon Musk’s heyday of Twitter.

Why are top AI talents reluctant to follow Musk’s AI vision?

2. The “side effects” of Musk-style management

The departure of two co-founders in a row forces a re-examination of what is really happening inside xAI.

Although the company has not disclosed specific reasons for the departures, looking at Musk’s management style across Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX, the problem may not be compensation but conflicts in management philosophy.

Musk is known for his “extreme squeezing” management style.

During Twitter’s transformation, he once made employees sleep in the office and carried out large-scale layoffs with the approach of “either be extremely hardcore or leave.” This management style might work in manufacturing or relatively mature tech products, but AI R&D requires creative thinking and long-term focus, not just efficiency in execution.

A former OpenAI researcher said in an interview: “AI research has its own rhythm. Sometimes a breakthrough in an algorithm takes months of focused thinking; other times, it involves repeated trial and error. If management keeps pushing for ‘faster, faster,’ it can easily lead to researcher frustration.”

More critically, there are disagreements over technical routes.

Musk has publicly stated that xAI aims for “the greatest degree of truth” and “understanding the universe.” This grand vision is inspiring, but in terms of specific technical implementation, it often requires more pragmatic path choices.

When the CEO’s vision conflicts with the technical team’s judgment, who has the final say?

In traditional AI research institutions, technical experts usually hold more influence. But in Musk’s companies, final decision-making power often rests with him.

3. The “talent bloodbath” in AI

Viewing xAI’s talent loss in a broader context, it actually reflects the ongoing “talent war” across the entire AI industry.

Today’s AI industry faces a scarcity of top talent comparable to nuclear physicists in the last century.

An excellent AI researcher might receive offers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind simultaneously, with annual salaries easily exceeding $500,000, and stock options worth astronomical amounts.

In this environment, retaining talent depends not just on money but also on platform and atmosphere. Researchers prefer places where they can focus on technology, have clear R&D paths, and are not frequently disturbed by management.

From this perspective, OpenAI and Anthropic have advantages.

Both are led by AI researchers, with technical teams having significant influence over key decisions. In contrast, xAI appears more like a “CEO-driven” company—Musk’s personal will often override the technical team’s judgment.

This isn’t to say Musk’s approach is wrong, but in the specialized field of AI, this management style may not be optimal.

A Reddit user summed it up sharply: “Musk excels at engineering and productization, but the early stage of AI research is more like scientific exploration, requiring patience and room for trial and error.”

The question now is, how much time does xAI have to adjust?

In the AI “winner-takes-all” game, falling behind by half a year could mean being completely out of the race. Losing two co-founders, for a company still seeking technological breakthroughs, could be a much heavier cost than expected.

After all, in this AI arms race, the most scarce resource is not money, but those who truly understand how to make machines “think.”