SpaceXAI Hemorrhaging Talent — 50+ Departed Since Merger, 9 of 12 xAI Co-Founders Gone

TechCrunch·high signal

TechCrunch reports 50+ researchers and engineers have left SpaceXAI since the February merger, with 9 of 12 original xAI co-founders now gone. Pre-training team lead Juntang Zhuang's departure particularly alarmed insiders. At least 11 defected to Meta and 7 to Thinking Machines Lab, with others joining OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind. The exodus raises questions about whether SpaceXAI can still develop frontier models as Musk pursues a SpaceX IPO.