Elon Musk’s xAI Runs on Ex-Google Talent

When artificial intelligence researcher Igor Babuschkin announced his departure from Elon Musk’s xAI this week, he became the second founding member of the team to quit this year. And like Christian Szegedy, another co-founder who left in May, Babuschkin had originally come from Google.

Despite the pair’s departure, xAI still relies heavily on talent from Google. xAI has hired at least 40 former Google employees since Musk formed the company in 2023, including at least 19 researchers and engineers who joined this year, according to LinkedIn and X posts and profiles from xAI employees. Musk’s company has also aggressively hired from several big tech rivals, including Meta Platforms, Amazon and TikTok parent ByteDance, said a person with direct knowledge of the company.