# Toby Pohlen

> Toby Pohlen is a London-based AI engineer and former xAI founding team member whose work spans computer vision at RWTH Aachen, game-playing systems at Google DeepMind, and Grok product engineering. He left xAI in February 2026 after nearly three years and said he intended to document what he had learned.

- **Role:** AI engineer and researcher
- **Organizations:** xAI, Google DeepMind, RWTH Aachen University
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, Master of Science in Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University
- **Known for:** Co-authored a CVPR 2017 paper reporting 71.8% intersection-over-union on Cityscapes without pre-training., Credited on DeepMind’s AlphaStar research team., Co-authored the DeepNash Stratego research paper.

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Completed his computer science bachelor’s degree at RWTH Aachen; his LinkedIn lists the Schoeneborn Prize and a place on the dean’s list.
- **2016** — Completed a research-oriented computer science master’s degree at RWTH Aachen, graduating top of his class according to his LinkedIn profile.
- **2017** — Co-authored a CVPR paper on full-resolution residual networks for street-scene segmentation.
- **2019** — Credited as a member of the DeepMind AlphaStar team in its public announcement and Nature paper.
- **2022** — Co-authored research on DeepNash, a Stratego-playing AI agent.
- **2023** — Joined xAI’s founding team when the company was announced in July.
- **2024** — Named in Capital’s Top 40 unter 40, according to his LinkedIn profile.
- **2026-02** — Briefly assigned to lead xAI’s Macrohard team, then announced his departure from xAI on February 27.

## Achievements

- Co-authored a CVPR 2017 paper reporting 71.8% intersection-over-union on Cityscapes without pre-training.
- Credited on DeepMind’s AlphaStar research team.
- Co-authored the DeepNash Stratego research paper.
- Member of xAI’s 2023 founding team.
- Named in Capital’s Top 40 unter 40 in 2024, according to LinkedIn.

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Announced February 27 as his last day at xAI after nearly three years.
- **2026-02** — Was named to lead xAI’s Macrohard computer-agent team during a company reorganization shortly before his departure.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/toby-pohlen-a22254104
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/TobyPhln
- GitHub: https://github.com/TobyPDE

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/toby-pohlen
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29