Robert Keele, head of legal of xAI, has stepped down after just over a year to spend more time with his children. In his announcement, Keele acknowledged “daylight between our worldviews” with CEO Elon Musk, who has not commented on Keele’s departure.
Keele shared the news on X as well as LinkedIn, said:
“I love my two toddlers, and I don’t get to see them enough.”
Even though he called working with Musk “the adventure of a lifetime” and said that his time at the AI business was “incredible”, he stated that he couldn’t continue “riding two horses at once — the family and the job.”
Social media was filled with support for Keele after the news broke out. His parents as well as his xAI colleagues showed their full support. He had just started his own, brief, fractional legal firm when he became the first legal head of xAI in May 2024.
He said:
“I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to run legal at xAI, but Keele Law had a good run (~3 weeks!).”
He added that he is “beyond stoked, and insanely lucky.”
In May 2024, Robert Keele came to xAI just before the business revealed a massive $6 billion Series B fundraising round. It was estimated to be $24 billion and was supported by big players which included Andreessen Horowitz along with Sequoia Capital.
Soon after, xAI started to grow quickly, and in March of this year, it bought X, Musk’s social media business. According to Musk at the time, the purchase valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.
Before he launched his own business, Keele was working as general counsel at Silicon Valley innovation center of Airbus and head of legal at Elroy Air, which is a developer of autonomous aircraft.
The one who is taking over is “Lily Lim”. Before she became a lawyer, she was a rocket scientist at NASA who worked on spacecraft navigation for the project that imaged the surface of Venus.
After working as a lawyer for several enterprises and businesses, including ServiceNow, she joined xAI in late 2024 as a privacy and intellectual property specialist.
Keele’s exit is consistent with Musk’s empire’s trend of executive churn. Tesla recently lost a number of senior executives, including X CEO Linda Yaccarino departed last month.
Musk publicly demands that workers put in long hours, even if it involves sleeping in the office, as was the case when he bought X, formerly Twitter. Musk also employes many of longer-serving lieutenants.
The AI coding startup Cognition is looking to dramatically decrease the number of its employees. It is as example of the latest businesses which seems to have adopted the same approach with the aim to surpass its opponents.
Additionally, the CEO of the company reportedly sent an email to the employees declaring that he is opposed to work-life balance.
