Elon Musk’s last co-founder reportedly leaves xAI

In a significant shake-up at Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, the last two remaining co-founders have reportedly exited the company. Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, who were among the original team of 11 co-founders, have now joined their colleagues in leaving, as reported by Business Insider. Kroiss announced his departure earlier this month, and Nordeen followed suit shortly thereafter. Their exits come in the wake of Musk's admission that xAI was not established correctly from the outset and is now undergoing a complete overhaul from the ground up. Recently, xAI was integrated into Musk’s SpaceX, uniting the three entities—SpaceX, xAI, and X (the platform formerly known as Twitter)—under a single corporate structure, coinciding with SpaceX's plans for a public offering. Both Kroiss and Nordeen had direct ties to Musk, with Kroiss leading the pretraining team and Nordeen serving as Musk's key operational assistant. Nordeen transitioned to xAI from Tesla, where he played a pivotal role during significant layoffs at Twitter following Musk's acquisition of the platform in 2022. TechCrunch has reached out to xAI for further comments on these developments.