Robert Keele, xAI’s head of legal, announced this week that he has stepped down after just over a year in the role, citing a desire to spend more time with his young children and noting “daylight between our worldviews” with CEO Elon Musk. Musk has not commented publicly on the departure.
“I love my two toddlers and I don’t get to see them enough,” Keele shared in posts on both X and LinkedIn. While he called his tenure at the AI startup “incredible” and working with Musk “the adventure of a lifetime,” Keele admitted that balancing his demanding role with family life was no longer sustainable.
Keele’s resignation drew an outpouring of support from xAI colleagues and parents online. He joined the company in May 2024 as its first legal head, abandoning his own newly launched fractional legal practice after just three weeks to take on the role. Shortly after, xAI secured a $6 billion Series B funding round backed by major investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $24 billion. In March 2025, xAI made headlines again after acquiring Musk’s social media platform X in a deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.
Prior to xAI, Keele served as head of legal at autonomous aircraft maker Elroy Air and as general counsel at Airbus’s Silicon Valley innovation center.
Taking over from Keele is Lily Lim, a former NASA rocket scientist who worked on spacecraft navigation for Venus mapping missions before transitioning into law. Lim joined xAI in late 2024 as a privacy and IP specialist, bringing legal experience from multiple firms and companies including ServiceNow.
Keele’s exit adds to a growing list of high-level departures across Musk-led companies. Just last month, X CEO Linda Yaccarino stepped down, and Tesla has seen several top executives leave in recent months. Musk has long been known for expecting long hours from his teams, sometimes even sleeping at the office, a culture that some newer tech start-ups, like AI coding company Cognition, have also embraced.
