March 13 (Reuters) - Elon Musk has triggered a fresh

wave of job cuts at his AI firm xAI, with more co-founders

pushed out amid his dissatisfaction with the underperformance of

the startup's coding division, the Financial Times reported on

Friday.

Musk last month overhauled the management of xAI, ahead of a

planned initial public offering that could rank among the

largest ever, after merging the company with his rocket firm

SpaceX.

He bought in "fixers" from SpaceX and Tesla to

audit xAI, who let go of several employees whose work was deemed

inadequate, according to FT.

Co-founder Guodong Zhang, head of xAI's Imagine team,

told colleagues he was leaving after being blamed for issues

with the coding product and relieved of his primary duties by

Musk, the report said, citing two people familiar with the

decision.

He confirmed his departure in a post on X on Thursday.

Zihang Dai, another co-founder, reportedly left xAI earlier

this week. The exits leave the three-year-old AI company with

only two of its 12 co-founders who helped Musk set up xAI in

March 2023, according to the report.

SpaceX, which purchased xAI to create a $1.25 trillion

company, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for

comment.

XAI staff have complained that the upheaval is damaging

morale and standing in the way of it reaching full potential,

the FT report said.

Researchers continue to leave because of burnout because of

Musk's "extremely hardcore" work demands or after receiving

better offers from rivals.

Recruiters have been contacting candidates who had

previously been rejected to extend job offers, often with

improved financial terms, the report said.

"Many talented people over the past few years were declined

an offer or even an interview at xAI. My apologies," Musk said

in an X post on Friday, adding that he will reach back out to

promising candidates.

xAI bought in Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg from

code-generation startup Cursor on Thursday.