Editorials & Other Articles

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 fact that Musk is a user of ketamine and other mind-altering substances has long been known. As I pointed out in March, Musk’s “use (or abuse) of illicit drugs—including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, and mushrooms, as well as ketamine—has been reported by such reputable outlets as The Wall Street Journal.” On Friday, The New York Times published an extensively documented article that made clear that Musk’s drug uses is even more intense and undisciplined than the earlier reporting had outlined:

Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.