Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of Elon Musk‘s artificial intelligence company xAI, announced on X his resignation from the startup he helped launch in 2023, saying he would shift his focus to a new venture centered on AI safety.
He also announced the launch of Babuschkin Ventures, an investment firm aimed at funding research in AI safety and backing companies developing agentic systems designed to advance humanity and explore unanswered scientific questions.
“The singularity is near, but humanity’s future is bright,” Babuschkin wrote, inviting entrepreneurs aligned with this mission to contact him via email.
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In the post, Babuschkin said his lifelong dream of advancing humanity through technology was shaped by his parents’ decision to emigrate from the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in search of a better future for their children.
He said he studied particle physics as a Ph.D. student at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but began to question whether superintelligence, rather than larger colliders, could solve fundamental scientific mysteries such as developing a theory of quantum gravity or proving the Riemann hypothesis.
In early 2023, a meeting with Musk led to long discussions about AI’s potential and risks, resulting in the founding of xAI with the mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. Babuschkin said in the post that the early days were challenging, as building a top AI company from scratch required significant hands-on engineering work.
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One of xAI’s most ambitious achievements was building the supercluster in Memphis, Tennessee, in just 120 days, a feat industry veterans had warned would be impossible, with Babuschkin writing in the X post that he oversaw much of the company’s engineering efforts. He described a critical moment toward the end of the build when the team faced issues communicating over remote direct memory access between machines, prompting Musk to fly to the data center to assist in troubleshooting.
“Our infra team landed in Memphis in the middle of the night and got straight to work,” Babuschkin wrote, explaining that the issue was eventually traced to an incorrect basic input/output system setting. When the system finally ran successfully, Musk posted about the achievement at 4:20 a.m., a moment Babuschkin recalled as filled with adrenaline and laughter.
