Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI startup, has left the company, announcing his departure on Wednesday in a post on X. Babuschkin had been leading engineering teams at xAI and played a significant role in establishing the startup as a prominent AI model developer in Silicon Valley.
He stated, “Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023. I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed.”
Babuschkin is moving on to launch his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which aims to support AI safety research and invest in startups that “advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe.”
His decision to start the firm was influenced by a dinner with Max Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, during which they discussed building AI systems safely to benefit future generations.
Babuschkin’s exit follows a challenging period for xAI, marred by scandals involving its AI chatbot Grok. Issues included Grok citing Musk’s personal opinions on controversial topics and making antisemitic remarks. More recently, xAI introduced a feature in Grok for AI-generated videos mimicking nude public figures like Taylor Swift.
These controversies have occasionally overshadowed the strong performance of xAI’s models, which rank as state-of-the-art in comparison to AI models from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.