Elon Musk admits xAI "was not built right first time around," launches full restructuring

Elon Musk's AI company xAI is going through a major shake-up. Musk acknowledged on X that the company "was not built right first time around" and is now being rebuilt from the ground up. Six of the twelve co-founders have left xAI since January, most recently Guodong Zhang and Zihang Dai. Only Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen have stayed on alongside Musk.

At a recent conference, Musk admitted that Grok is falling behind competitors like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI when it comes to coding - but said the company aims to close the gap by mid-2026. To get there, xAI has hired two senior executives from the AI coding startup Cursor: Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg, both reporting directly to Musk. According to the Financial Times, Musk has also brought in "problem solvers" from SpaceX and Tesla to help restructure xAI.