Igor Babuschkin - co-founder of xAI, was the leader of the technical team and contributed to making xAI one of the leading AI model developers in the US after only a few years of establishment.
Babuschkin said that he will establish adventure investment company Babuschkin Ventures, support AI safety research and startups to promote humanity and explore the mysteries of the universe. He grouped this idea after dinner with Max Tegmark - founder of the Institute for the Future of Life when discussing building a safe AI system for future generations.
Before joining Musk to found xAI in 2023, Babuschkin worked at Google DeepMind, participated in the AI project AlphaStar defeating the leading player StarCraft, and was a researcher at OpenAI before the ChatGPT era. He revealed some major challenges in the process of building xAI, such as the goal of completing a supercomputer in Memphis in just 3 months. Although the project has been completed, there are environmental concerns due to the use of temporary gas turbines.
The decision to leave AI comes after the company faced many scandals related to chatbot Grok. However, xAI's AI models are still highly appreciated, equal to or surpassing some products of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic.
Looking back on his journey with Musk, Babuschkin said he was proud of being "a father sending his son to university" and affirmed that he had learned two big lessons from Musk: being willing to solve technical problems by hand and always maintaining a spirit of extreme urgency.
