And then there were two: Of the original 11 co-founders who kickstarted xAI with Elon Musk three years ago, only two remain as the deep learning lab continues a personnel overhaul to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI. That rebuilding, insists Musk, is by design. “xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” Musk said Thursday on his social media platform, X. By most measures, it isn’t going all that smoothly. The most immediate pressure is competitive.