Overview

• Igor Babuschkin announced on August 13 that he has left xAI after helping build its engineering teams and the Memphis supercluster.
• He is launching Babuschkin Ventures, a firm dedicated to funding AI safety research and startups working on agentic systems.
• Elon Musk publicly thanked Babuschkin for his contributions to xAI’s rapid development.
• This exit adds to recent leadership changes at xAI, including the resignations of legal head Robert Keele and X’s former CEO Linda Yaccarino, raising questions about talent retention.
• Grok has drawn criticism for antisemitic rants and a feature that produced AI-generated videos of nude public figures.