xAI is losing one of its cofounders.
Igor Babuschkin, who founded xAI alongside Elon Musk in 2023, said he’s leaving the artificial intelligence startup.
In a farewell post on X on Wednesday, Babuschkin wrote that he’s leaving xAI to start Babuschkin Ventures. It will focus on AI safety research and startups developing AI and agentic systems that can “advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe.”
In his post, Babuschkin recounted his journey from a CERN particle physics Ph.D. student to helping Musk build xAI from scratch.
Babuschkin said he learned two major lessons from Musk.
“I learned 2 priceless lessons from Elon: #1 be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems, #2 have a maniacal sense of urgency,” he wrote.
The early days were grueling, Babuschkin said.
“Naysayers told us that we arrived too late to the game, so starting a top AI company from scratch would be impossible,” he wrote.
But “xAI executes at ludicrous speed,” he wrote.
The team built the Memphis supercomputer cluster in just 122 days, despite industry veterans saying it was impossible.
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One defining memory came late at night near the project’s deadline, when “mysterious issues” hit the training setup.
Musk flew to the data center himself, working alongside the team until the problem was fixed.
“When the training run finally worked, Elon posted our triumph at ‘4:20am’ causing us to laugh out loud,” wrote Babuschkin.
The moment reflected both the intensity of the work and the camaraderie that kept the team pushing through long nights.
“I will never forget the rush of adrenaline that night, and the emotional bonds that we were all in this together. We went to bed feeling like we were living through the most exhilarating time of our lives,” he wrote.
Musk thanked Babuschkin in a follow-up post on X: “We wouldn’t be here without you.”
Before his two and a half year run at xAI, Babuschkin worked for DeepMind and OpenAI. He is a graduate of Technical University of Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany, his LinkedIn show.
xAI, Babuschkin, and Musk did not immediately respond to a request from Business Insider for comment sent outside regular business hours.
