Elon Musk has framed the recent exodus of talent from his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, as a necessary growing pain, saying the company’s evolution “required parting ways with some people.”
Musk’s post on X (formerly Twitter) followed an all-hands meeting at xAI where he told the audience: “We’re actually going to have a mass driver on the Moon,” although he acknowledged that such a thing was currently in the realm of science fiction.
A mass driver is best thought of as an electromagnetic catapult that flings payloads into space at high velocities. That’s an ideal thing to have if you wanted to, say, have a datacenter in space consisting of a million satellites.
The science fiction reference was well made. Musk has a reputation for making bold statements and then singularly failing to deliver. Remember humans on Mars in 2024 or 2026? It would be impractical to list every missed prediction, but Musk’s track record on timelines is relevant when assessing the credibility of new forecasts.
Musk wrote: “Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you.”
Or head for the door, as half of the xAI founding team has already done. Yuhai Wu announced his departure on Monday, and Jimmy Ba packed up his things on Tuesday. Both were full of praise for xAI, but the fact that six members of the company’s 12-person founding team have now departed is notable.
Musk has spent the last few weeks rolling out one ambitious announcement after another. This month has seen SpaceX acquire xAI, plans for a datacenter in space, the abrupt pivot from missions to Mars to the Moon, and so on. Even in the fast-paced world of AI development, it is difficult not to imagine the whiplash felt by some employees within Musk’s companies.
Musk stated: “xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism.” ®