- Enterprise Insider reviewed a replica of xAI’s inside organizational chart.
- Elon Musk’s direct reviews embrace Igor Babuschkin, Ross Nordeen, Jimmy Ba, Jared Birchall, and Daniel Rowland.
- The ranks additionally embrace former Tesla and Google engineers and Musk’s son.
At xAI, Elon Musk has marshaled a workforce that has ballooned by greater than 1,000 workers in lower than two years as he goes head-to-head with rivals OpenAI and Google.
Enterprise Insider reviewed the corporate’s inside organizational chart to establish and perceive the individuals close to the highest of the AI enterprise as of early this 12 months. The chart, which included names, titles, and different info, options former Tesla and Google engineers, Musk’s house workplace supervisor, and his son.
As CEO, Musk oversees a staff of greater than 1,200 individuals. 5 workers report on to the billionaire: xAI founding staff members Igor Babuschkin, Ross Nordeen, and Jimmy Ba; longtime Musk aide Jared Birchall; and Daniel Rowland, whose involvement within the firm hasn’t been beforehand reported.
Marc Piasecki/Getty, Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty, Ava Horton/BI
A spokesperson for xAI didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Musk, Ba, Rowland, Birchall, Babuschkin, and Nordeen didn’t reply to a request for remark.
This is what we find out about Musk’s direct reviews.
Jimmy Ba
Ba was one in all Musk’s first hires at xAI. He appeared on a livestream alongside Musk and a handful of different xAI workers when the corporate unveiled the newest model of Grok in February.
A number of of Ba’s direct reviews joined the corporate as “Member of Technical Workers” throughout the previous few months, together with Pawan Bhandarkar and Satvik Ramaprasad, based on their LinkedIn profiles.
Most xAI workers roll as much as Ba, together with round 900 AI “tutors,” the hourly workers who prepare the corporate’s chatbot, Grok. These staff report back to staff leads who’re overseen by “human information managers.” The vast majority of tutors work remotely, and a few work exterior the US.
Outdoors his work at xAI, Ba is an assistant professor on the College of Toronto. He is a part of the Machine Studying Group, school from the pc science division who work on varied initiatives involving synthetic intelligence. He acquired his Ph.D. from the college whereas finding out underneath the Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, who has been known as the “godfather of AI.”
Daniel Rowland
Rowland joined xAI almost a 12 months in the past and oversees each of xAI’s information facilities, based on the organizational chart.
The corporate constructed its Memphis information heart — which Musk has stated is the most important on this planet, and which the corporate has stated homes greater than 200,000 GPUs — in 122 days, a fraction of the time it sometimes takes to construct such a facility. The corporate additionally has two different amenities in Memphis, together with a wastewater therapy plant and a website that was introduced in March. Musk has stated the corporate plans to scale the location, which he has nicknamed “Colossus,” to 2 million GPUs within the coming 12 months.
xAI additionally quietly arrange a knowledge heart in Atlanta in December that homes about 12,000 GPUs.
Rowland has a staff of some dozen individuals, together with eight direct reviews. In January, two of these workers left Tesla’s Dojo mission, which is targeted on constructing the carmaker’s customized supercomputer, to affix the info heart mission, LinkedIn profiles present.
Brent Mayo, a former SpaceX engineer, additionally reviews to Rowland. Mayo has turn out to be the face of xAI in Memphis, the place he continuously engages with native officers and serves because the senior supervisor of website builds and infrastructure. Rowland’s different direct reviews embrace Alexander Coppess, Andy Kim, Lee Meyer, and Liz Balke.
Rowland’s staff is based out of Memphis, however he has one worker listed as a knowledge heart technician primarily based in Atlanta.
BI was unable to substantiate particulars of Rowland’s skilled background. A {hardware} engineer named Daniel Rowland has labored on Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer since 2018, based on his LinkedIn profile and inside documentation reviewed by BI.
Tesla didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Igor Babuschkin
Babuschkin beforehand labored at Google DeepMind.
Babuschkin manages the most individuals straight at xAI, with 29 direct reviews. Certainly one of his staff members consists of Kai Musk, Elon Musk’s son, based on the chart. Musk is listed in xAI’s listing as an “Engineering Intern” on the corporate’s “Engineering Strike Group.” His involvement with the corporate has not been beforehand reported.
When requested about his place on the firm, Kai Musk responded from his xAI e-mail tackle that “this info is inaccurate.” He declined to remark additional and didn’t reply to follow-up questions.
Babuschkin additionally oversees members of the corporate’s “xAI Accomplice” division, together with Marko Elez and Aram Moghaddassi, two individuals who have been related to Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity.
Each beforehand labored at Musk’s X and Neuralink, based on Moghaddassi’s LinkedIn profile and an archived model of Elez’s LinkedIn profile. Elez was listed as an “energetic” worker at xAI in February; 4 days after BI reached out to xAI about his employment, his firm e-mail tackle stopped working.
Different individuals listed as members of the xAI Accomplice division underneath Babuschkin embrace Aqueel Miqdad and Anton Shevchenko, who each listing X as their present employer on LinkedIn.
Jared Birchall
Birchall is listed as an “xAI Accomplice” on the organizational chart, however he doesn’t report back to Babuschkin. His staff consists of members of the finance, authorized, safety, and HR groups. His direct reviews embrace Robert Ochoa, the human assets lead; Robert Keele, the authorized lead; and Pablo Mendoza, the finance lead.
Birchall, like Rowland, is listed as a distant worker.
The previous Morgan Stanley banker additionally serves because the CEO of Musk’s mind chip startup, Neuralink, and he has run Musk’s household workplace for 9 years.
Ross Nordeen
Nordeen has no direct reviews. He was a technical program supervisor at Tesla earlier than he joined xAI in 2023, based on an inside Tesla database from December 2021.
Do you’re employed for xAI or one in all Musk’s firms? Attain out to the reporter utilizing a non-work e-mail and system at gkay@businessinsider.com or by way of the encrypted messaging platform Sign at 248-894-6012.
