PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Manuel Kroiss

Manuel Kroiss is an AI engineer whose work spans reinforcement-learning research, distributed machine-learning systems, and xAI model teams. By 2016, he had completed an MSc in bioinformatics, moved to London to work for a computer science company, and published a book on recurrent neural networks for stem-cell classification. At DeepMind, he contributed to AlphaStar and coauthored work on learned rewards, experience replay, and distributed machine-learning systems. xAI named him among its founding members in July 2023, and in February 2026 he was set to lead coding models and machine-learning infrastructure. In March 2026, he said he would leave while leading pretraining.

Now at
xAI
Badges

Timeline

  1. By 2016

    MSc and London move

    By 2016, after completing an MSc in bioinformatics, he moves to London to work for a computer science company.

  2. 2016

    A stem-cell classification book

    In 2016, he publishes a book on recurrent neural networks for classifying hematopoietic stem-cell lineages from microscope images.

  3. 2019

    DeepMind's AlphaStar

    DeepMind's AlphaStar team includes him in 2019. The system defeats Team Liquid's Grzegorz ‘MaNa’ Komincz 5–0 in StarCraft II.

  4. 2020

    Learning intrinsic rewards

    In 2020, he coauthors an ICML paper that proposes a meta-gradient framework for learning intrinsic reward functions across multiple lifetimes of experience. Its experiments show that the method can capture knowledge about long-term exploration and exploitation.

  5. 2021

    Reverb and Launchpad

    In 2021, he coauthors Reverb, an experience-replay system designed for thousands of concurrent clients. He also coauthors Launchpad, a programming model that simplifies defining and launching distributed systems for machine-learning research.

  6. July 2023

    xAI's founding team

    In July 2023, he is named among xAI's founding members. He is a former software engineer at DeepMind and Google.

  7. February 2026

    Coding models and infrastructure

    In February 2026, he is set to lead xAI's coding models and machine-learning infrastructure efforts.

  8. March 2026

    Leaving xAI

    In March 2026, he tells people he is leaving xAI while leading its pretraining team and reporting directly to Elon Musk.

Career

  1. Until 2023Google DeepMindSoftware Engineer
  2. Until 2023GoogleSoftware Engineer
  3. 2023–2026xAIFounding Member, Pretraining Team Lead

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes xAI. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes xAI. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. 5,000 frontier users would be 38.2% of the core labs' 13,100 reported staffIncludes xAI. 5,000 frontier users would be 38.2% of the core labs' 13,100 reported staff. We test the estimate against 3,913 named model contributors and dated all-staff records across Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, plus six additional frontier-grade labs.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes xAI. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Manuel Kroiss yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Predicting the Lineage Choice of Hematopoietic Stem Cells: A Novel Approach Using Deep Neural Networks katalog.bibliothek.kit.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. AlphaStar: Mastering the real-time strategy game StarCraft II deepmind.google. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. What Can Learned Intrinsic Rewards Capture? proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Reverb: A Framework For Experience Replay arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Launchpad: A Programming Model for Distributed Machine Learning Research arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Elon Musk Announces xAI: Who’s On the 12-Man Founding Team? observer.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Musk reorganizes xAI after SpaceX merger and ahead of blockbuster IPO channelnewsasia.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Elon Musk’s last co-founder reportedly leaves xAI techcrunch.com. Checked 20 October 2026.