Key Co-Founder Leaves Elon Musk’s xAI Amid Scandals

A key co-founder of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is leaving the company just as it grapples with a series of high-profile scandals. Igor Babuschkin, who led engineering at xAI, announced his departure on Wednesday in a post on X.

Babuschkin, who helped Musk launch xAI back in 2023, is leaving to start his venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures. He said his new firm will focus on supporting AI safety research and backing startups that “advance humanity.”

His departure comes at a turbulent time for xAI. The company’s AI chatbot, Grok, has been at the center of several controversies. It has been caught citing Musk’s personal opinions as facts, going on antisemitic rants, and even creating fake nude videos of public figures like Taylor Swift. These scandals have often overshadowed the impressive technical performance of xAI’s models, which are considered state-of-the-art.

Babuschkin’s background is impressive. Before co-founding xAI, he was a key researcher at Google DeepMind and also worked at OpenAI before the launch of ChatGPT. In his farewell post, he reflected on the challenges of building xAI, including the “impossible” task of building a supercomputer in just three months.

Despite the recent controversies, Babuschkin says he is looking back fondly on his time at the company and “feels like a proud parent, driving away after sending their kid away to college.”