Jimmy Ba, co-founder of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI, announced his departure Tuesday – the sixth founding member to leave in recent months. Ba's exit follows Tony Wu's resignation just 24 hours earlier, halving the original 12-person leadership team since early 2025. The departures come as SpaceX prepares to acquire xAI ahead of a planned IPO this year.

xAI confronts mounting challenges including multiple class-action lawsuits over its Grok chatbot generating deepfake pornography on X (formerly Twitter). The $200 billion-valued company faces intense competition from OpenAI and Anthropic while burning through cash to develop its AI systems. Musk launched the startup in 2023 to rival existing AI leaders.

The leadership exodus raises questions about xAI's stability during a critical growth phase. Legal liabilities from Grok's outputs compound pressures on a company already struggling to keep pace in the capital-intensive AI race. With half its founding team gone, xAI's acquisition by SpaceX now occurs amid significant operational turbulence.