Elon Musk’s xAI is shedding one in all its founding members. Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of the developer behind Grok, introduced yesterday (Aug. 13) that he’s departing the corporate to begin his personal enterprise capital agency targeted on A.I. startups. “At this time was my final day at xAI, the corporate that I helped begin with Elon Musk in 2023,” stated Babuschkin in a submit on X. “I nonetheless bear in mind the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about A.I. and what the long run would possibly maintain. We each felt {that a} new A.I. firm with a unique sort of mission was wanted.”
Musk responded to Babuschkin by thanking him for his efforts and stating that xAI “wouldn’t be right here with out you.” The billionaire launched the startup two years in the past with a mission to prioritize accuracy, security and the development of human capabilities. xAI’s flagship product is Grok, an A.I. chatbot that competes with different main fashions throughout a number of business benchmarks.
Babuschkin, who led engineering groups at xAI, joined the corporate in Might 2023 after earlier roles at Google DeepMind and OpenAI. Skilled as a physicist at CERN in Switzerland and TU Dortmund in Germany, he later developed an curiosity in superior A.I. and related with Musk over what he described as “a shared imaginative and prescient of A.I. used to learn humanity.”
The corporate’s early days had been difficult, Babuschkin admitted. “Naysayers instructed us we’d arrived too late, that constructing a high A.I. firm from scratch could be not possible,” he wrote in a submit on X. He recounted how his group constructed xAI’s large Memphis supercluster in simply 120 days “via blood, sweat and tears.”
The Memphis coaching cluster, regardless of its scale, has drawn native criticism for counting on emission-heavy fuel generators. Grok itself has additionally confronted controversy, with studies of the chatbot making antisemitic remarks and echoing Musk’s private views in responses.
Over time, Babuschkin stated, he realized two key classes from Musk: to “be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into the technical issues,” and to “have a maniacal sense of urgency.”
His subsequent transfer is to launch Babuschkin Ventures, a agency that may put money into startups and agentic A.I. programs “that advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe”—a mission that intently mirrors xAI’s acknowledged aim to “perceive the true nature of the universe.”
A.I. security will likely be a central focus for the agency, Babuschkin added. “As frontier fashions change into extra agentic over lengthy horizons and a wider vary of duties, they’ll tackle increasingly more highly effective capabilities, which is able to make it important to review and advance A.I. security,” he stated. “I need to proceed on my mission to result in A.I. that’s protected and useful to humanity.”
Babuschkin is likely one of the few unique members to go away xAI since Musk based it with a 12-person group drawn largely from OpenAI and Google DeepMind. Different departures embrace researchers Kyle Kosic and Christian Szegedy, who left final yr for roles at OpenAI and Morph Labs, respectively, whereas most co-founders have remained.
