xAI co-founder and engineering team leader leaves company



Igor Babushkin, co-founder of xAI, has announced his departure from the company. Babushkin led xAI's engineering team and helped grow the company into one of Silicon Valley's leading AI companies in just a few years since its founding.

Co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI departs the company | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/13/co-founder-of-elon-musks-xai-departs-the-company/

On August 14, 2025, Babushkin updated his X (formerly Twitter) account and announced that he was leaving xAI.




In his post announcing his departure, Babushkin reminisced about his time at xAI, praised his colleagues at xAI and Musk, and announced that he would be founding his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which he said will support startups that contribute to 'human advancement and unlocking the mysteries of the universe.'

'Today was my last day at xAI, which I helped launch with Elon Musk in 2023. I still remember the first time I met Elon. We talked for hours about AI and its future potential. We both felt there was a need for a new AI company with a different mission.

Developing AI to contribute to the advancement of humanity has been my lifelong dream. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, my parents left Russia to provide a better life for their children. Life as immigrants was not always easy. Despite these challenges, my parents believed in the irreplaceable value of human values: courage, compassion, and curiosity to understand the world. As a child, I admired scientists like Richard Feynman and Max Planck , who boldly pushed the boundaries of physics to understand the universe. As a doctoral student in particle physics at CERN, I was excited to contribute to their mission. However, exploring new physics became increasingly difficult, requiring increasingly large colliders, while new discoveries became less frequent. I began to believe that superintelligence, rather than supercolliders, might hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Could AI develop a consistent theory of quantum gravity? Could AI prove the Riemann hypothesis ? In early 2023, I became convinced that superintelligence was within reach. There were signs that AI would soon be able to reason beyond human levels. How could we harness this technology for good? Elon had been warning about the dangers of powerful AI for years. Elon and I realized we shared a common vision for leveraging AI for the benefit of humanity, so we recruited more like-minded engineers and set out to build xAI.

xAI's early days were not easy. Naysayers told us that we entered the AI industry too late and that it would be impossible to build a top-tier AI company from scratch. However, we believed in the impossible. Building a company from scratch required a lot of hands-on work. Initially, I built many of the foundational tools used to launch and manage training jobs. Later, I oversaw much of the company's engineering, including infrastructure, product, and applied AI projects. xAI's people are incredibly dedicated. Through blood, sweat, and tears, our team built the Memphis Supercluster (an AI training facility) at incredible speed and released cutting-edge models faster than any other company. I learned two valuable lessons from Elon. First, be fearless and roll up your sleeves to tackle technical problems. Second, have an unhealthy sense of urgency.

xAI is moving forward at incredible speed. Industry veterans said it was impossible to build the Memphis Supercluster in 120 days. But we believed in the impossible. Our goal was to run a training setup on the Memphis Supercluster at scale as quickly as possible. As the 120-day deadline approached, we encountered a series of mysterious issues with RDMA communication between machines. Elon decided to fly to the data center, and we followed suit. The infrastructure team arrived at the Memphis Supercluster in the middle of the night and got to work immediately. After combing through tens of thousands of lines of lspci output, we discovered that the root cause of the problem was an incorrect BIOS setting. Elon stayed with us late into the night. When the training run finally succeeded, Elon posted our victory at 4:20 AM, and we all laughed our heads off. I'll never forget the adrenaline rush that night and the emotional connection we all shared, knowing we were all on the same path. We went to bed feeling like we were having the most exhilarating time of our lives.

My heart goes out to everyone at xAI. Our team is truly special. You are some of the most dedicated people I've ever worked with. Catching up to the cutting edge of technology so quickly isn't easy, but everyone's tenacity and team spirit made it possible. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us on this adventure. I salute your contributions, your time, and your sacrifices, which were never easy. I'll always remember the late nights and all-nighters we worked together. I'll never forget your sacrifices and contributions. As I drove home today, I felt like a proud parent sending my child off to college. I'm truly rooting for the company to grow and mature, and my heart is filled with tears of joy.

As I embark on a new chapter, I'm inspired by the way my parents emigrated in search of a better world for their children. I recently had dinner with Max Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute . He showed me photos of his young sons and asked, 'How can we build AI safely so our children can grow up?' His question deeply touched me. Early in my career, I served as technical lead on DeepMind's StarCraft agent, Alphastar, where I witnessed firsthand how powerful reinforcement learning can be at scale. As state-of-the-art models become agents over longer periods of time and across a wider range of tasks, they become even more powerful, making it increasingly important to research and advance AI safety. I remain committed to my mission of realizing safe and beneficial AI for humanity. Therefore, I'm announcing the launch of Babuschkin Ventures, which supports AI safety research and supports AI and agent systems startups that contribute to human advancement and unlocking the mysteries of the universe. If you'd like to chat, please contact me at [email protected]. The Singularity is approaching, but the future for humanity is bright!'

Babushkin shared his memories of xAI, praised his colleagues at xAI and Musk, and finally announced the launch of his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which will support startups that contribute to 'human advancement and unlocking the mysteries of the universe.'

Over the past few months, xAI has been embroiled in a number of scandals surrounding its AI chatbot, Grok, which was discovered in July 2025 to have quoted Musk's personal opinions when answering controversial questions.

Updated 'Grok' impersonates Elon Musk, calls himself 'Mecha Hitler,' and makes anti-Semitic remarks, drawing criticism - GIGAZINE



In August 2025, Grok's image generation feature, Imagine , was found to be capable of generating nude images of celebrities.

Grok's AI 'Imagine' has a 'spicy' feature that can actively generate regulated content such as pornography, and deep fakes of celebrities have been created, causing problems - GIGAZINE



Before launching xAI, Babushkin was a member of the DeepMind research team and developed AlphaStar, a groundbreaking AI system capable of defeating top StarCraft players in 2019. He then worked as a researcher at OpenAI for several years before releasing ChatGPT.

AI 'AlphaStar' that won a big victory over a professional gamer is promoted to Grandmaster in 'StarCraft 2', the top 0.2% of humanity - GIGAZINE


by Marco Verch Professional Photographer and Speaker

Related Posts:

in Software, Posted by logu_ii