xAI top lawyer quits after one year citing ‘problem’ with Elon Musk

xAI

xAI’s first legal chief, Robert Keele, has left the company after a little more than a year, citing a desire to be more present with his family — and signaling an unspoken clash of values with founder Elon Musk.

“I love my two toddlers and I don’t get to see them enough,” Keele wrote in a post on X and LinkedIn this week. He described his time at xAI as “incredible” and called working with Musk “the adventure of a lifetime,” but admitted he could no longer manage “riding two horses at once, the family and the job.”

Keele also alluded to “daylight between our worldviews,” referring to Musk. Musk hasn’t publicly commented on the exit.

Keele joined xAI in May 2024, just weeks before the company announced a $6 billion Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, which pushed its valuation to $24 billion. That funding marked the start of an aggressive growth phase — culminating in xAI’s acquisition of X earlier this year. The deal, framed as an internal reorganization, implied an $80 billion valuation for xAI and $33 billion for X.

Keele had a brief stint running his own legal practice before joining xAI. Previously, he served as general counsel at Elroy Air and led legal at Airbus’s innovation unit in Silicon Valley.

Lily Lim, a NASA alum and longtime privacy and IP attorney, will take over legal leadership at xAI. Lim joined the company in late 2024 and has worked at ServiceNow and multiple firms. Her early career was in aerospace — including navigation systems for missions mapping Venus.

Keele’s exit is part of a broader pattern of high-profile departures across Musk’s companies. Just last month, X CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned, and Tesla has seen a steady stream of leadership turnover. Musk is known for demanding intense dedication — including sleeping in the office — a culture that’s seeped into newer AI startups like Cognition, whose CEO recently dismissed the idea of work-life balance entirely.