xAI hires former Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong as CFO (techcrunch.com)

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has appointed former Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong as chief financial officer, the Financial Times reports. Armstrong — who previously advised Musk during the Twitter acquisition — has been working with xAI for several weeks and will oversee finances for both xAI and X after the companies’ April merger. His hire fills a gap created when xAI’s prior finance chief, Mike Liberatore, left in July; Armstrong is taking over from X’s CFO Mahmoud Reza Banki, who is also departing. xAI did not comment on the appointment. For the AI/ML community, the move matters less for models and more for strategy: a seasoned investment banker in the CFO seat signals a shift toward tighter financial governance, fundraising and monetization as xAI integrates with X. That could directly affect resource allocation for compute, hiring, partnerships and long-term R&D — including priorities around safety research — at a time of notable executive churn (co‑founder Igor Babuschkin left to start an AI safety VC, the general counsel and other senior leaders also departed). Armstrong’s appointment suggests xAI is preparing for a more commercially driven phase, which may accelerate productization or change how the outfit funds compute-intensive model development and AI safety efforts.