xAI Unveils New AI Strategy Following $1.25 Trillion SpaceX Merger.
Elon Musk has announced a major restructuring of xAI, his artificial intelligence startup, following the departure of two co-founders and several senior team members. The leadership overhaul comes shortly after xAI’s high-profile merger with SpaceX, a deal that reportedly values the combined company at $1.25 trillion, significantly strengthening xAI’s capital position as it scales AI infrastructure and product development.
During an all-hands meeting streamed on X (formerly Twitter), Musk outlined a new operating structure for xAI built around four core divisions: Grok (chatbot and voice AI), Coding, Imagine (video generation), and Macrohard, an AI software company powered by digital agents.
“What matters is velocity and acceleration. If you are moving faster, you will be the leader,” Musk told employees.
New Leadership Structure at xAI
The restructuring follows the exits of co-founders Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, marking the fifth and sixth departures from xAI’s original founding team since its 2023 launch. Earlier exits included Kyle Kosic, Igor Babuschkin, and Christian Szegedy, while Greg Yang recently stepped back due to health reasons.
Under the new structure:
- Aman Madaan will lead Grok’s chatbot and voice AI division, highlighting rapid model development in response to competition from OpenAI’s voice technology.
- Manuel Kroiss will head the Coding division.
- Guodong Zhang will oversee Imagine, xAI’s real-time video generation product.
- Toby Pohlen will run Macrohard, a digital-agent-driven AI software unit, playfully named as a nod to Microsoft.
Musk emphasized that real-time video generation and AI compute will be central to xAI’s competitive strategy. “Most of the AI compute is going to be understanding real-time video generation,” he said, predicting market leadership in the segment.
Massive AI Infrastructure Expansion
xAI continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure, particularly its Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee. The company has acquired a third building in the region, expanding computing capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts. The broader expansion—partly located across state lines in Mississippi—represents an investment exceeding $20 billion and will require between 10,000 and 20,000 Nvidia GB300 systems, according to Musk.
The recent SpaceX merger is expected to ease funding pressures as xAI continues to burn capital on data centers, advanced chips, and AI talent acquisition.
Growth Across the X Ecosystem
Meanwhile, Nikita Bier, head of product at X, revealed that the platform and its related apps, including Grok, now reach approximately 1 billion users. January marked the strongest month ever for user engagement, with new users spending 55% more time on the app compared to six months ago. Subscription services are now generating $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
Musk also confirmed upcoming launches, including a standalone X Chat app and limited external testing of X Money, a digital payments feature designed to enable peer-to-peer transactions within the platform. He reiterated that Grok will remain ad-free. With leadership reshuffled, infrastructure expanding, and AI ambitions scaling rapidly, Musk is positioning xAI to compete aggressively in the global AI race—focused on speed, compute power, and next-generation multimodal AI systems.
