So far in 2025, two founding members of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI have left the team. Indeed, Christian Szegedy left in May, and Igor Babuschkin departed this week. Notably, both had previously worked at Google (GOOGL), and xAI continues to hire heavily from the tech giant, with at least 40 ex-Google staffers joining since its founding in 2023, according to The Information. It is worth noting that many of these new hires had worked on cutting-edge projects, such as Google DeepMind’s Gemini models.
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Now at xAI, they’re helping build Grok 4, which Musk says outperforms similar AI models from OpenAI, Meta (META), and Google. This movement of talent shows just how frequently researchers are switching between top AI firms. Although some xAI employees have left for OpenAI, including co-founder Kyle Kosic and infrastructure engineering head Uday Rudarraju, there hasn’t been a noticeable wave of defections to Google, Microsoft (MSFT), or Meta. A likely reason is that xAI is still a young company, and many employees’ stock options haven’t fully vested yet.
xAI is also known for its intense work pace, with some teams reportedly working all seven days of the week. While that might drain some employees, others are said to be motivated by the company’s mission and are eager to contribute. Nevertheless, the company has been facing some integration issues after merging with social media platform X in March. In fact, the two companies still operate somewhat separately, with different internal systems and even separate Slack accounts. As a result of these limitations, some employees have resorted to using Signal group chats instead to coordinate their work.
What Is the Prediction for Tesla Stock?
When it comes to Elon Musk’s companies, most of them are privately held. However, retail investors can invest in his most popular company, Tesla (TSLA). Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 14 Buys, 15 Holds, and eight Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average TSLA price target of $307.23 per share implies 6.5% downside risk.
