Igor Babuschkin exits xAI to establish a startup centered on AI safety

There are moments in a career when you know you’ve reached the end of a chapter not because you’ve failed, but because it’s time to build something new. That pivotal moment came for Igor Babuschkin this week

The physicist-turned-AI researcher, who co-founded Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI in 2023, announced on Wednesday that he’s stepping away to launch Babuschkin Ventures. His new focus: AI safety research and supporting startups creating intelligent systems with the potential to “advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe.”

In his farewell post on X, Babuschkin traced his path from a CERN Ph.D. student to Musk’s right-hand man in building xAI from scratch. Along the way, he says he picked up two lessons from Musk that he considers priceless: roll up your sleeves and get into the technical trenches yourself, and move with a maniacal sense of urgency.

The early days at xAI weren’t glamorous. Critics said they’d started too late, that the AI race was already decided. Against all doubts, the Memphis supercomputer cluster was up and running in just 122 days.

One memory, Babuschkin recalled, will stay with him forever. It was late at night, days before a critical deadline, when “mysterious issues” brought training to a halt. Musk didn’t just send instructions from afar — he flew to the data center, joined the engineers on the floor, and stayed until the system ran. When it finally did, at 4:20 a.m., Musk posted about the win. The team, exhausted and giddy, laughed together in the glow of that hard-fought success.

“I will never forget the rush of adrenaline that night, and the emotional bonds that we were all in this together,” Babuschkin wrote. “We went to bed feeling like we were living through the most exhilarating time of our lives.”

Musk later responded on X: “We wouldn’t be here without you.”

Before his two-and-a-half years at xAI, Babuschkin worked at DeepMind and OpenAI. He graduated from the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany.

Someone who work with business insider reached out to the Elon Musk, along side with is co-founder Babuschkin and xAI after working hours, non responded.