Meet the Chinese AI star who splashed a reported US$70m on a California mansion

Tony Wu Yuhuai, the China-born co-founder of Elon Musk's AI lab xAI, now renamed SpaceXAI, reportedly spent US$70 million on a 12-acre estate in Hillsborough, California, the largest property deal in the Bay Area this year. The estate features a private nine-hole golf course, a 150-seat outdoor amphitheatre, and a 2,100-gallon saltwater aquarium. Wu, who left xAI earlier this year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Advertisement Meet the Chinese AI star who splashed a reported US$70m on a California mansion Tony Wu Yuhuai, co-founder of Elon Musk’s AI lab, reportedly buys 12-acre estate, putting a spotlight on China’s Silicon Valley talent 2-MIN READ2-MIN Iris Deng /author/iris-deng in Shenzhen Tony Wu Yuhuai, the China-born co-founder of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence https://www.scmp.com/topics/artificial-intelligence?module=inline&pgtype=article lab, sparked discussions across Chinese social media after reportedly spending US$70 million on a six-bedroom Californian mega-mansion.The property deal, the largest so far this year in the Bay Area, pushed the thirty-something AI star under the spotlight, alongside other Silicon Valley-based Chinese talent that has contributed to frontier AI labs from OpenAI to Meta Platforms https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3363638/meta-challenge-chinas-open-weight-ai-dominance-amid-us-regulatory-fears?module=inline&pgtype=article .Wu appeared to be the buyer of a 12-acre 4.8 hectare estate in Hillsborough, an affluent area in California close to Silicon Valley, according to a report by The San Francisco Standard last week. The luxury estate features a private nine-hole golf course, a 150-seat outdoor amphitheatre and a 2,100-gallon saltwater aquarium among other amenities, according to the report. Wu, who left xAI earlier this year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. In 2023, Wu co-founded xAI, now renamed as SpaceXAI https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3356375/spacex-ipo-set-lift-industry-push-space-based-ai-computing-solar-power-report?module=inline&pgtype=article after his stint at Google as a research scientist from 2021. Before that, Wu interned at OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind team as a research scientist. , During his time at xAI, Wu was one of the 12 members of the founding team alongside Musk, and a core developer of the chatbot Grok, with a focus on AI mathematics https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3363966/chinese-doctor-stuns-maths-world-cracking-decades-old-problem-using-chatgpt?module=inline&pgtype=article and building machines that can reason. He previously grabbed media attention in 2025 when he sat next to Musk during a live-streamed launch of the firm’s chatbot Grok 3.Advertisement Select Voice Select Speed 1.00x