AI pioneer Yann LeCun calls Elon Musk's xAI a 'faliure'

Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun told CNBC that Elon Musk's AI lab xAI is 'kind of a failure,' citing difficulty hiring top talent after all non-Musk cofounders left and the company's need to lease data centers to competitors like Anthropic to recoup costs. LeCun said he is not positive about xAI's prospects and does not believe it can compete on the AI frontier.

Two of AI's biggest names have reignited their feud. Former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has long had a rocky relationship with Elon Musk. LeCun has bashed Musk's leadership strategies https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-yann-lecun-elon-musk-xai-ai-researcher-engineer-definition-2025-7 and his AI predictions https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-yann-lecun-challenges-elon-musk-claims-ai-outsmarting-humans-2024-3 . Musk has questioned LeCun's science https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1795204353071919229?lang=en . On Thursday, LeCun told CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/18/yann-lecun-elon-musk-xai-failure-ai-labs-bubble-risk.html that Musk's AI lab, xAI, was "kind of a failure." "Elon is now in a position where it's very, very difficult for him to hire top people in AI, because he's not behaved in very good ways toward the previous team," the AMI Labs founder said. LeCun was referring to xAI's founding team. All of the non-Musk cofounders have since left xAI. The final holdout, Ross Nordeen, was abruptly cut off https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-xai-cofounder-exits-spacex-ipo-2026-4 from the company's systems and disappeared from a group chat, Business Insider previously reported. One of xAI's recent moves was to lease its data centers to competitors such as Anthropic https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-deal-to-use-elon-musks-colossus-data-center . LeCun pointed to this as a sign of weakness. "He's got this huge infrastructure, which he rents to other people, because that's the only way he can recoup the costs," he said. LeCun said that he was "not very positive about the prospect of xAI." The interviewer asked whether LeCun thought xAI could compete on the frontier of AI. "No, I don't," he replied. XAI is now a part of SpaceX https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-acquiring-xai-deal-elon-musk-2026-2 , which went public last week. SpaceX and xAI did not respond to requests for comment. In the interview, LeCun was more positive about Musk's other companies. "SpaceX is doing great stuff," he said. "I own a Tesla," LeCun said. He still took a jab: "Full self-driving is not full self-driving, but it's useful."