--- title: "AI Researcher Elon Musk Poached From OpenAI Returns to OpenAI" description: "Less than a year after joining xAI's founding team, one of the researchers poached by Elon Musk has apparently returned to OpenAI." date: "2024-07-02" modified: "2024-07-02" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/xai-researcher-returns-openai" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "OpenAI" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "OpenAI" - "the digest" - "xai" --- # AI Researcher Elon Musk Poached From OpenAI Returns to OpenAI ![Less than a year after joining xAI's founding team, one of the researchers poached by Elon Musk has apparently returned to OpenAI.]() *\Image: Marc Piasecki via Getty / Futurism\* ## Hello, Goodbye Less than a year after joining xAI's founding team, one of the researchers poached by Elon Musk has apparently returned to OpenAI. As [*Fortune* magazine reports](), OpenAI researcher Kyle Kosic has returned to the firm after what turned out to be a brief defection to Musk's AI venture. While the timeline is somewhat fuzzy, Kosic's tenure with xAI appears to have begun last summer, when it was announced that he was leaving OpenAI to become one of the [new project's founding engineers](). But by April of this year, [per his LinkedIn](), he'd already left the Muskian gamble and boomeranged back to his old employer. Beyond OpenAI confirming that the researcher and technical staff member who first joined the firm in 2021 had indeed returned, there's not a lot known about what happened with Kosic's about-face. While it could suggest tumult at the firm, *Fortune* notes that current [*PitchBook* estimates put xAI's staff]() at just under 100 people, and that beyond Kosic's reversion back to OpenAI, all its original founding members appear to still work there. ## Money Moves Notably, Kosic appears to have left xAI a month prior to the company announcing that it had [raised a whopping $6 billion]() in seed capital to fund its challenge to OpenAI — which, of course, Musk cofounded nearly a decade ago before [leaving just a few years later]() over differences in vision. With those gigantic investments, xAI is now among the [highest-funded AI firms]() in the world, putting it in the same league as Mistral, the French venture that's considered Europe's answer to OpenAI and which is also [currently valued at $6 billion](). At the end of the day, it's anyone's guess why Kosic left xAI, especially right before the company announced that huge investment infusion. Given that we're now just under a year into the company's existence and it has little to show for it besides a [fortune's worth of NVIDIA chips]() and its [hilariously-buggy Grok chatbot]() hosted on the site formerly known as Twitter, however, the defected researcher could be a canary in the coal mine. **More on OpenAI:** [*ChatGPT-4o Is Sending Users to a Scammy Website That Floods Your Screen With Fake Virus Warnings*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()