X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, has immediately left the corporate, based on sources with information of the matter.
Wang first joined Elon Musk’s X in July 2023 and has been an integral a part of the corporate’s management, typically serving as a conduit between Musk and the remainder of the corporate’s engineers. Extra lately, he was seen internally as X’s defacto head of engineering and product, particularly with Musk lately focusing extra of his time on xAI and DOGE. It’s unclear why Wang is departing now. Neither he nor an organization spokesperson responded to a request for remark in time for publication.
X lately added different engineering management: Mike Dalton and Uday Ruddaraju, each beforehand technical leads at Robinhood, joined in January. Their LinkedIn profiles present that additionally they work at xAI, which has turn out to be more and more intertwined with X over the past 12 months.
Due to the rising profile of xAI and Musk’s newfound political affect, X’s enterprise seems to be turning round. The corporate reportedly simply obtained a $44 billion valuation from buyers — the identical worth Musk paid for Twitter in 2022. Whereas Musk stays an avid poster on X, his consideration and management at X has turn out to be more and more cut up since he began campaigning for President Donald Trump final summer season.
When Musk first bought Twitter, he vowed to remodel it into an “every part app” akin to China’s WeChat. The Verge beforehand reported an inside X assembly the place Musk mentioned that it “would blow my thoughts” if the corporate couldn’t deal with “somebody’s complete monetary life” by the tip of 2024. These plans haven’t come to fruition, although my sources say that work remains to be underway to launch the X Cash funds platform (it’s slated to return “later this 12 months”).