Working for a company under Elon Musk's umbrella is rarely a stable occupation. Musk is known for his extremely demanding standards, and when he focuses on a specific issue, it often results in job losses—either through direct termination or by pushing individuals to resign voluntarily. This week appears to be another instance of this pattern: both xAI and Tesla have experienced executive departures. At xAI, co-founder Tony Wu announced his departure early Tuesday. He was previously responsible for the startup's reasoning-related teams. Later on Tuesday, another co-founder, Jimmy Ba, also indicated he would be leaving. In total, this means half of the 12-member founding team at xAI has now departed. Combined with last week's reports of Musk's dissatisfaction with Grok's progress, it is anticipated that Wu and Ba may not be the last senior executives to leave xAI in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, at Tesla, veteran executive Raj Jegannathan, who had been with the company for 13 years, announced his resignation on Monday. Jegannathan had held his newly expanded role for only a few months, overseeing Tesla's sales and service operations. He assumed this position last year following the departures of Tesla's former chief sales officer and other key executives. If his departure was voluntary, it would be understandable: the longtime IT executive had no sales experience yet was suddenly tasked with reversing the sluggish growth of Tesla's electric vehicle business. As Musk shifts focus toward longer-term projects like robotics and autonomous taxis, Tesla's EV business has declined for two consecutive years. Admittedly, frequent executive departures from Musk's companies are not new—both xAI and Tesla lost significant senior talent last year as well. Supporters of Musk might argue that continuous employee turnover pushes those who remain to work harder. However, persistent personnel instability ultimately harms a company: it leads to the loss of internal experience and knowledge, and damages the corporate reputation, affecting future recruitment. While a core group of dedicated followers remains willing to work for Musk, many engineers and sales professionals likely believe that life is too short to endure such conditions. As SpaceX anticipates a public listing later this year, a key issue for investors to monitor is the stability of the relationship between Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell is widely seen as a crucial stabilizing force and is arguably the most important executive across Musk's companies, aside from Musk himself. While xAI and Tesla can withstand sporadic individual departures, Shotwell's exit would immediately trigger a crisis.
In Amazon's Super Bowl advertisement for Alexa, Chris Hemsworth pretends to be fearful about bringing artificial intelligence into the home. But new employees at Amazon might have more reason to fear Hemsworth himself—after he suddenly appeared on the company's internal organizational chart in an extremely senior role, reporting directly to CEO Andy Jassy. This is not a joke. According to a screenshot of the organizational chart seen by The Information, Hemsworth's listed position at Amazon was "Chief Charisma Officer, Amazon Devices," with a start date of February 5, just days before the Sunday Super Bowl. Hemsworth's "high position" at Amazon did not last long. An employee reported that he has since been removed from the organizational chart. This could be considered an example of streamlining management and reducing bureaucracy! — Katherine Peroff
Other News: Music streaming and podcast platform Spotify reported a 7% revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2025, consistent with the previous quarter. A 4% decline in advertising revenue partially offset an 8% increase in subscription revenue. According to reports, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are purchasing a luxury property on the artificial island of Indian Creek in South Florida, often referred to as the "Billionaire Bunker." Leading Chinese AI company Zhipu AI has anonymously released a new large language model on the developer-focused AI model marketplace OpenRouter, using a different name. The second-largest U.S. ride-hailing company, Lyft, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $1.6 billion, a 3% year-over-year increase. However, its stock plummeted 15% in after-hours trading. Lyft stated that, excluding the impact of adjustments for legal, tax, and regulatory provisions, revenue growth would have been 13.5%.
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