Igor Babuschkin, a founding member of Elon Musk’s xAI, said Wednesday that he’s leaving the artificial intelligence startup to launch his own venture firm.
“Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023,” Babuschkin wrote on X, which is owned by xAI. “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. Building AI that advances humanity has been my lifelong dream.”
A former research engineer for Google’s
DeepMind and ex-member of OpenAI’s technical staff, Babuschkin recounted some of xAI’s major operational achievements during his tenure, including building out engineering teams at the company.
“Through blood sweat and tears, our team’s blistering velocity built the Memphis supercluster, and shipped frontier models faster than any company in history,” he wrote.
