Elon Musk has lost his last xAI cofounder. TechCrunch reported this morning that Ross Nordeen, one of the original 11 engineers who launched xAI with Musk in 2023, has left. That leaves Musk as the only founding member still at the company. xAI is valued at $50 billion, just merged into SpaceX, and is heading toward a public listing. Not ideal timing.
The Nordeen Departure
Business Insider reported that Nordeen left after xAI merged into SpaceX, bringing the AI company’s valuation into the combined entity Musk is now steering toward an IPO. Folding a standalone AI startup into an aerospace company only works if you have a coherent story for investors. That story is harder to sell with the entire founding team gone.
This is not an isolated exit. Multiple xAI co-founders have left over the past year. Musk described the company as needing a “full rebuild” at one point, which was a convenient framing, but it got harder to maintain as departures kept coming.
The IPO Problem
xAI was last valued at $50 billion. SpaceX’s IPO will be heavily scrutinized. A combined entity trying to go public without any of its founding team in place is not a great look. Musk is running xAI, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and X at the same time. The exodus suggests xAI lacks the kind of senior technical depth that makes a board comfortable before a major listing.
Grok, xAI’s main chatbot, is competing against Claude, GPT, and Gemini, all of which have had more time to build research teams and user bases. Trying to argue xAI has a long-term research advantage without experienced AI leadership is a real problem, not just a messaging issue.
What This Means Going Forward
Musk has always been able to attract strong people. The xAI founding team included some genuinely good engineers. But mass departures before an IPO are a legitimate red flag. Markets have a history of punishing companies that look like one person holding the whole thing together.
We have written about Musk’s outsized AI ambitions before, including his claim that GPT-5 would “eat Microsoft alive”. Whether xAI survives the next year with its valuation intact is a different and harder question than the ones Musk usually gets asked.
