Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, two of the original co-founders of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI, have stepped down from the company less than three years after helping to launch it. The pair announced their departures in separate posts on social media, expressing gratitude to Musk but offering no detailed explanation for their decisions or insight into their future plans. Their exits mark the latest developments in a broader wave of departures from xAI. With Wu and Ba leaving, the company is now left with only half of its original 12 co-founders, highlighting significant leadership turnover at a time when competition in the AI industry is intensifying.

According to a report by the Financial Times, Ba’s resignation came amid internal tensions within xAI’s technical team. The report suggested there had been pressure to significantly enhance the performance of the company’s AI models, as Musk seeks to narrow the gap with leading competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic. However, Ba did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the reported tensions.

The leadership changes arrive just days after Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, announced plans to acquire xAI in a deal that would create a combined entity valued at approximately 1.25 trillion dollars. The merged company is expected to pursue a public listing later this year, with ambitions that include financing large-scale projects such as deploying data centers in space.