'AI Godfather' Yann LeCun says Elon Musk's xAI is a 'failure'

Yann LeCun, a prominent figure in artificial intelligence, has sharply criticized Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, labeling it a "failure." LeCun, who is also the chief AI scientist at Meta, pointed to the exodus of all its founding members as a primary reason for his negative assessment.

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Honestly, xAI is a kind of failure. Because all the founding members have left

"Honestly, xAI is a kind of failure. Because all the founding members have left," LeCun stated in a recent CNBC interview. He further argued that Musk faces significant challenges in attracting top AI talent due to his past treatment of teams. The departure of key personnel, including Ross Noudin in March, the last remaining co-founder, underscores these difficulties.

The struggles in talent acquisition appear to be reflected in xAI's financial performance. The company, along with SpaceX's AI division, reported an operating loss of $2.5 billion (approximately 3.84 trillion won) in the first quarter. When asked about xAI's future competitiveness, LeCun responded negatively, expressing a pessimistic outlook on the company's prospects.

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Musk is in a very difficult position to recruit top AI talent right now. Because the way he treated the previous team was not very good

LeCun also questioned xAI's infrastructure investment strategy, particularly its decision to rent out its data centers to companies like Anthropic. He suggested this indicates a weakness, implying that renting is the "only way to recoup costs" and that the company's own AI technology development is not keeping pace with its infrastructure build-out. Despite his criticism of xAI, LeCun offered praise for Musk's other ventures, such as SpaceX, and acknowledged the utility of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature, though he noted it isn't truly autonomous.

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The only way to recoup costs is through renting