xAI hits with exit wave, Elon Musk’s conducts companywide meeting to reassure team

xAI has lost two co-founders in less than 48 hours, and half of the founding teams have departed from the company, marking a significant leadership shift. This has led xAI CEO Elon Musk to conduct an all-hands session with its employees. 

According to a New York Times report, Musk discussed restructuring and said that the recent exits will not affect the company’s long-term plans or performance. Although Musk did not mention the cofounders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba’s departure, he reportedly thanked them for their contributions to the company. 

Musk reassured the existing team that they can continue executing the company’s strategy. In the meeting, he also discussed the recent restructuring and merger with SpaceX. Musk plans to build a factory on the moon to build AI satellites. He said, “You have to go to the moon.” 

“It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about, but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen,” said Musk. 

The meeting also points to the X’s progress, highlighting that it has 600 million monthly active users. He also teased that X will be getting new features and tools, such as X Money for banking purposes and a stand-alone chat app. 

Musk said, “We’ll obviously give people reasons, compelling reasons, to use the app every day, and have, my expectation is, well over a billion daily active users.”

It reported that the “all-hands” was previously scheduled for last week, but was delayed until February 10. Although during that time, xAI stunned the tech sector with the SpaceX merger announcement. Now, the departure of two co-founders is being linked to the merger, with speculation that the deal may have triggered internal restructuring or strategic disagreements at the leadership level.

Despite all the rumours, xAI is planning for “possible IPO in 2026,” the company said in an internal memo.