Robert Keele mentioned this week that he has stepped down as xAI’s head of authorized after simply over a 12 months, saying he needs to spend extra time along with his youngsters. In his announcement, Keele additionally acknowledged “daylight between our worldviews” with boss Elon Musk, who hasn’t commented on Keele’s exit.
“I like my two toddlers and I don’t get to see them sufficient,” Keele wrote, posting the information on each X and LinkedIn. Regardless of calling his time on the AI startup “unbelievable” and dealing with Musk “the journey of a lifetime,” he mentioned he couldn’t hold “driving two horses directly — the household and the job.”
Keele’s information prompted an outpouring of assist on social media from xAI colleagues in addition to dad and mom. When he joined xAI in Could 2024 as its first authorized head, he had simply launched his personal, very short-lived fractional authorized outfit. “Keele Regulation had an excellent run (~3 weeks!), however I couldn’t cross up a possibility to run authorized at xAI,” he wrote on the time, calling himself “past stoked, and insanely fortunate.”
Keele arrived simply earlier than xAI introduced an enormous $6 billion Collection B funding spherical in Could 2024, backed by heavy hitters like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, valuing the corporate at $24 billion. Quickly after, xAI started experiencing fast progress and, in March of this 12 months, acquired X, Musk’s social media firm, in a deal that, mentioned Musk on the time, valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.
Earlier than his entrepreneurial stint, Keele had been head of authorized at autonomous plane maker Elroy Air and normal counsel at Airbus’s Silicon Valley innovation middle.
Taking on is Lily Lim, who, earlier than changing into a lawyer, was a rocket scientist at NASA, engaged on spacecraft navigation for the undertaking that mapped Venus’s floor. She joined xAI in late 2024 as a privateness and IP specialist after authorized stints at quite a few corporations and corporations like ServiceNow.
Keele’s departure matches an ongoing sample of government turnover throughout Musk’s empire. X CEO Linda Yaccarino left final month, and Tesla has misplaced a number of prime executives lately. Musk — who additionally has quite a few longstanding lieutenants — brazenly expects workers to work lengthy hours, even when it means sleeping on the workplace, as occurred when he acquired X, previously Twitter.
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Some newer corporations seem to have adopted an analogous mentality to get forward of rivals, together with AI coding startup Cognition, which is trying to aggressively shrink its workforce. Actually, its CEO lately advised workers in an e mail that he doesn’t imagine in work-life steadiness.
