xAI’s Legal Chief Steps Down After Challenging Year

This week, Robert Keele announced his resignation as the head of legal at xAI, a position he held for just over a year. He emphasized his desire to spend more time with his children. In his announcement, he noted a “disconnect between our perspectives” with CEO Elon Musk, who has yet to respond to Keele’s departure.

“I truly cherish my two toddlers and feel I haven’t dedicated enough time to them,” Keele expressed in his posts on X and LinkedIn. He described his experience at the AI startup as “incredible,” calling his collaboration with Musk “the adventure of a lifetime,” while highlighting that he couldn’t juggle “two horses at once — family and career.”

Keele’s departure has garnered support on social media from xAI colleagues and fellow parents. He joined xAI as its first legal head in May 2024, shortly after starting a brief fractional legal practice. “Keele Law had a short run (~3 weeks!), but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to lead the legal team at xAI,” he reminisced, showing his enthusiasm for the role.

Keele came on board just ahead of xAI’s impressive $6 billion Series B funding round in May 2024, attracting investments from prominent firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, which lifted the company’s valuation to $24 billion. Soon after, xAI saw significant expansion, notably with its acquisition of X, Musk’s social media platform, in March of this year—a deal Musk claimed valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.

Before joining xAI, Keele was the head of legal at Elroy Air, a firm specializing in autonomous aircraft, and had served as general counsel at Airbus’s innovation hub in Silicon Valley.

Lily Lim will take over Keele’s duties; prior to her legal career, she was a rocket scientist at NASA, where she assisted in spacecraft navigation for the mission that mapped Venus’s surface. She joined xAI in late 2024 as a privacy and intellectual property expert, bringing a wealth of experience from various companies, including ServiceNow.

Keele’s resignation highlights a trend of executive turnover at Musk’s companies. Last month, X CEO Linda Yaccarino stepped down, and Tesla has seen several notable executive departures recently. Musk, who is known for creating a demanding work environment, has even encouraged employees to sleep at the office, as he suggested after acquiring X, formerly Twitter.

Some emerging companies appear to be adopting similar strategies to gain a competitive edge, such as the AI coding startup Cognition, which is currently downsizing its workforce. Notably, its CEO recently informed employees via email that he does not endorse work-life balance.