Mike Liberatore, the finance chief of Elon Musk's xAI, has departed from the artificial intelligence startup after a brief tenure, according to reports.
Liberatore's exit occurs in a climate of growing competition among AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which are investing heavily in the training and implementation of advanced systems.
Having served as xAI's chief financial officer since April, Liberatore's departure happened around the end of July, according to the report. The specific reasons behind his exit remain unclear.
Previously an executive at Airbnb, Liberatore played a role in xAI's $5 billion debt acquisition in June, in addition to another $5 billion in strategic equity investment.
The funds raised are intended to fuel xAI's development of AI solutions, a data center, and its main platform, Grok, as stated by Morgan Stanley.
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Musk established xAI in 2023 to compete with major tech companies' AI initiatives, claiming that industry leaders engage in excessive censorship and have inadequate safety measures.
The exit seems to have happened around the same time Linda Yaccarino unexpectedly declared her resignation as CEO of X, which became a subsidiary of xAI following Musk's merger of the two earlier this year.
Yaccarino didn't outline the reasons for her departure in July, which occurred shortly after X had to deactivate text responses from its “Grok” AI chatbot due to it identifying itself as “Mecha-Hitler” and promoting pro-Nazi sentiments.
Since then, she has taken a position as CEO of the digital health company eMed Population Health.
At the same time, xAI’s general counsel Robert Keele resigned last month after serving just over a year in the position.
In a goodbye message he posted on X and LinkedIn, Keele stated that he wanted to spend more time with his young children.
He described his experience at xAI as the “adventure of a lifetime” and commended Musk for his “vision, commitment, and intelligence,” while also recognizing that there was a “gap between our worldviews.”
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Additionally, Igor Babushkin, a prominent AI researcher who co-founded xAI with Musk in 2023, announced in August that he would be leaving to establish his own investment firm focused on AI safety. Another attorney at xAI, Raghu Rao, has also recently departed from the organization.
Musk’s merger valued X at $33 billion and xAI at $80 billion. xAI is in direct competition with leading AI companies, such as OpenAI founded by Sam Altman and Google.