Why top talent is walking away from OpenAI and xAI

Theresa Loconsolo

Sat, February 14, 2026 at 6:00 AM GMT+9 1 min read

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Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. Stargate is a collaboration of OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, with promotional support from President Donald Trump, to build data centers and other infrastructure for artificial intelligence throughout the US. Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature.

Watch as TechCrunch’s Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the week’s biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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