Feb 11 (Reuters) – Elon Musk overhauled the management of his artificial intelligence startup xAI ahead of a planned initial public offering that could rank among the largest ever, a week after merging the company with his rocket firm SpaceX.
The reorganization follows the recent departures of several co-founders at the three-year-old AI company, leaving only half of the startup’s original 12 co-founders and raising questions about stability as Musk pushes to compete with OpenAI and Google on all fronts.Â
“xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution,” Musk posted on X on Wednesday, adding that the move “unfortunately required parting ways with some people.”
The changes come days after co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba said in social media posts they had resigned from the AI firm they launched with Musk.
During an all-hands company meeting, Musk outlined plans to build a full-scale AI company competing in large language models, image and video generation systems and coding tools, as xAI seeks to catch up with rivals.
SpaceX is preparing for one of the biggest IPOs ever. It said last week it would purchase xAI to create a $1.25 trillion company with plans to go public later this year to help finance the billionaire’s ambitions to put data centers in space.
xAI has been reorganized into four main application areas, Musk said in the meeting posted on X.
Co-founder Guodong Zhang will head xAI’s Imagine team, focusing on multimedia, while Toby Pohlen will lead the Macrohard team, which steers efforts to automate company processes.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona, Rod Nickel)
