
9:49 PM PDT · August 7, 2025
Robert Keele said this week that he has stepped down arsenic xAI’s caput of ineligible aft conscionable complete a year, saying he wants to walk much clip pinch his children. In his announcement, Keele besides acknowledged “daylight betwixt our worldviews” pinch leader Elon Musk, who hasn’t commented connected Keele’s exit.
“I emotion my 2 toddlers and I don’t get to spot them enough,” Keele wrote, posting nan news connected some X and LinkedIn. Despite calling his clip astatine nan AI startup “incredible” and moving pinch Musk “the escapade of a lifetime,” he said he couldn’t support “riding 2 horses astatine erstwhile — nan family and nan job.”
Keele’s news prompted an outpouring of support connected societal media from xAI colleagues arsenic good arsenic parents. When he joined xAI successful May 2024 arsenic its first ineligible head, he had conscionable launched his own, very short-lived fractional ineligible outfit. “Keele Law had a bully tally (~3 weeks!), but I couldn’t walk up an opportunity to tally ineligible astatine xAI,” he wrote astatine nan time, calling himself “beyond stoked, and insanely lucky.”
Keele arrived conscionable earlier xAI announced a monolithic $6 cardinal Series B backing information successful May 2024, backed by dense hitters for illustration Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, valuing nan institution astatine $24 billion. Soon after, xAI began experiencing accelerated maturation and, successful March of this year, acquired X, Musk’s societal media company, successful a woody that, said Musk astatine nan time, weighted xAI astatine $80 cardinal and X astatine $33 billion.
Before his entrepreneurial stint, Keele had been caput of ineligible astatine autonomous craft shaper Elroy Air and wide counsel astatine Airbus’s Silicon Valley invention center.
Taking complete is Lily Lim, who, earlier becoming a lawyer, was a rocket intelligence astatine NASA, moving connected spacecraft navigation for nan task that mapped Venus’s surface. She joined xAI successful precocious 2024 arsenic a privateness and IP master aft ineligible stints astatine galore firms and companies for illustration ServiceNow.
Keele’s departure fits an ongoing shape of executive turnover crossed Musk’s empire. X CEO Linda Yaccarino left past month, and Tesla has mislaid respective apical executives recently. Musk — who besides has galore longstanding lieutenants — openly expects labor to activity agelong hours, moreover if it intends sleeping astatine nan office, arsenic happened erstwhile he acquired X, formerly Twitter.
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Some newer companies look to person adopted a akin mentality to get up of rivals, including AI coding startup Cognition, which is looking to aggressively shrink its team. In fact, its CEO precocious told labor successful an email that he doesn’t judge successful work-life balance.
Loizos has been reporting connected Silicon Valley since nan precocious ’90s, erstwhile she joined nan original Red Herring magazine. Previously nan Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch, she was named Editor successful Chief and General Manager of TechCrunch successful September 2023. She’s besides nan laminitis of StrictlyVC, a regular e-newsletter and speech bid acquired by Yahoo successful August 2023 and now operated arsenic a sub marque of TechCrunch.
You tin interaction aliases verify outreach from Connie by emailing connie@strictlyvc.com aliases connie@techcrunch.com, aliases via encrypted connection astatine ConnieLoizos.53 connected Signal.