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xAI’s Last Original Cofounder Leaves as Musk Rebuilds Under SpaceX

The exit signals a deep reset tied to SpaceX’s planned IPO.

Overview

  • Ross Nordeen, who served as Elon Musk’s right-hand operator, left the company Friday, making Musk the only original founder still at xAI.
  • SpaceX bought xAI in February, and the group is being reorganized as Musk prepares the rocket company for an initial public offering.
  • Musk said this month that xAI “was not built right first time around” and is “being rebuilt from the foundations up.”
  • The shakeup has cut projects and staff, including parts of Grok Imagine for images and video and the Macrohard AI agent effort, with dozens of employees departing.
  • xAI has begun new hiring, adding nearly a dozen people in recent weeks, including Cursor leaders Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, to shore up coding and product gaps with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.