Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI startup, announced his departure from the company on Wednesday in a post on X. Babuschkin led engineering teams at xAI and helped build the startup into one of Silicon Valley’s leading AI model developers just a few years after it was founded.

“Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023,” Babuschkin wrote in the post. “I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed.”

Babuschkin is leaving xAI to launch his own venture capital firm, Babuschkin Ventures, which he says will support AI safety research and back startups that “advance humanity and unlock the mysteries of our universe.”

The xAI co-founder says he was inspired to start the firm after a dinner with Max Tegmark, the founder of the Future of Life Institute, in which they discussed how AI systems could be built safely to encourage the flourishing of future generations. In his post, Babuschkin says his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Russia in pursuit of a better life for their children.

Babuschkin’s departure comes after a tumultuous few months for xAI, in which the company became engrossed in several scandals related to its AI chatbot Grok. For instance, Grok was found to cite Musk’s personal opinions when trying to answer controversial questions. In another case, xAI’s chatbot went on antisemitic rants and called itself “Mechahitler.” Most recently, xAI unveiled a new feature in Grok that allowed users to make AI-generated videos resembling nude public figures, such as Taylor Swift.

These scandals have at times overshadowed the performance of xAI’s models, which are state-of-the-art on several benchmarks compared to AI models from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.

Prior to co-founding xAI, Babuschkin was part of a research team at Google DeepMind that pioneered AlphaStar in 2019, a breakthrough AI system that could defeat top-ranked players at the video game StarCraft. Babuschkin also worked as a researcher at OpenAI in the years before it released ChatGPT.

In his post, Babuschkin details some of the challenges he and Musk faced in building up xAI. He notes that industry veterans called xAI’s goal of building its Memphis, Tennessee supercomputer in just three months “impossible.”

xAI was able to build its AI supercomputer in record time, however, environmentalists warn that the temporary gas turbines powering the cluster are pumping out emissions into neighboring communities and exacerbating their longstanding health issues.

Nevertheless, Babuschkin says he’s already looking back fondly on his time at xAI, and “feels like a proud parent, driving away after sending their kid away to college.”

“I learned 2 priceless lessons from Elon: #1 be fearless in rolling up your sleeves to personally dig into technical problems, #2 have a maniacal sense of urgency,” said Babuschkin.

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Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India, has quietly begun beta testing its food delivery service in Bengaluru, marking its first serious move to challenge market leaders Swiggy and Zomato in one of the world’s fastest-growing delivery markets.

The 10-year-old startup has started testing its food delivery service in three primary localities in the southern city of Bengaluru, namely Byrasandra, Tavarekere, and Madiwala (BTM) Layout, Hosur Sarjapura Road (HSR) Layout, and Koramangala, Rapido co-founder and CEO Aravind Sanka confirmed to TechCrunch.

Rapido created a wholly owned subsidiary Ctrlx Technologies to launch its food delivery service, named Ownly. The subsidiary lists Sanka and Rapido vice president of finance Vivek Krishna as the directors, per the regulatory filings reviewed by TechCrunch.

Sanka said there was no specific reason for setting up the subsidiary. However, it may be a strategic move to avoid potential conflicts of interest with Swiggy, which currently holds a 12% minority stake in the ride-hailing startup.

Swiggy recently confirmed in a letter to shareholders that it would reevaluate its investment in Rapido, citing a potential conflict of interest “that may arise in the future.”

Meanwhile, Rapido’s Ownly has also released its Android app on Google Play that offers food from nearby restaurants at around 15% lower prices than those on Swiggy and Zomato.

The lower pricing is a result of Rapido’s model of not taking commissions from restaurants, which are up to 30% in the case of other food delivery apps, including Swiggy and Zomato, and instead charging a fixed fee per order. The startup mentioned its fixed-fee approach in a proposal to restaurants in June.

Rapido has a fleet of around 10 million vehicles, including 5 to 6 million two-wheelers, across India, a person familiar with the startup’s business told TechCrunch recently. The company is using its two-wheeler fleet to deliver food — alongside offering its taxi and courier services.

Rapido will avoid showing restaurants located far from customers to reduce fuel costs and delivery times, and will curate menu items on its app to maximize margins while offering enough discoverability, a Rapido investor told TechCrunch on condition of anonymity.

While handling deliveries for Swiggy, Rapido gained insight into peak hours and high-demand restaurants — the data it would now leverage for its own food delivery service, the investor said.

The agreement with Swiggy does not prevent Rapido from using this data, although it does prohibit the startup from entering into contracts with Zomato or other competitors, the investor added.

Founded in 2015, Rapido began as a bike taxi aggregator before expanding into auto rickshaws, parcel delivery, and third-party logistics. In 2023, it entered the cab business to take on Uber and local rival Ola. The startup gained traction in this segment with its subscription-based model, positioning it as an alternative to the commission-based approach used by its competitors.

Rapido also partnered with Taiwanese battery-swapping electric two-wheeler maker Gogoro to deploy its vehicles as bike taxis. Moreover, the recent moves helped the startup boost its valuation and become a unicorn last year.

India’s online food delivery market is projected to surpass ₹2 trillion (approximately $23 billion) by 2030, per a report by Bain & Company and Swiggy released last year. Zomato currently leads the market with a 58% share, according to brokerage firm Motilal Oswal, while Swiggy holds the remaining 42%, per Bernstein. Uber was also among the early players in the space with Uber Eats, which it sold to Zomato in early 2020.

So far, Rapido has raised $574 million in 13 rounds, per Tracxn. It operates in more than 250 cities and handles over 3.5 million rides daily. The startup counts Prosus, WestBridge Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, and Think Investments, among its key investors.