
Earlier this month, it seemed that only two of Elon Musk’s 11 co-founders at his AI venture xAI remained with the firm. Now, as per Business Insider, the last two co-founders, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, have also exited.
On Wednesday, BI reported that Kroiss informed others about his departure from xAI, followed by the news that Nordeen also left the company on Friday.
Musk recently asserted that xAI “was not constructed properly [the] first time around,” and is now “being rebuilt from the ground up.” The company has recently been acquired by Musk’s SpaceX, integrating SpaceX, xAI, and X (previously Twitter) under one corporate entity, especially as SpaceX is reportedly gearing up for a public offering.
According to BI, both Kroiss and Nordeen reported directly to Musk, with Kroiss heading the company’s pretraining team, while Nordeen served as Musk’s “right-hand operator.” Nordeen reportedly transitioned to xAI from Tesla and played a role in strategizing significant layoffs at Twitter after Musk took over that company in 2022.
TechCrunch has contacted xAI for a statement.

