Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, officially launched Grok 3 late Monday night, introducing a new flagship AI model alongside major upgrades to its iOS and web apps. Grok 3 had faced as it was originally expected in 2024 but had to be postponed to now.
Elon announced the release on X, saying that Grok 3 was developed with ten times the computing power of its predecessor, Grok 2. The eccentric billionaire described Grok 3 as “an order of magnitude more capable than Grok 2”, claiming it prioritizes truth even when it contradicts politically correct narratives.
The main Grok model powers general-purpose AI tasks, while Grok 3 Mini offers faster responses but sacrifices some depth. The Grok 3 Reasoning and Grok 3 Mini Reasoning models are designed for advanced problem-solving, competing with OpenAI’s o3-mini and Chinese firm DeepSeek’s R1.
xAI claims that Grok 3 Reasoning is better than OpenAI’s o3-mini-high model in many benchmark tests, including AIME 2025, which evaluates high-level mathematical reasoning and also tries to “think through” complex problems, reducing the likelihood of hallucinations or incorrect answers, according to Elon.
The models can be accessed in the Grok app, where users can either use the standard “Think” mode or activate “Big Brain” mode for deeper analysis. A new DeepSearch feature, built into the app, scans both the web and posts on X to compile detailed research reports, which Elon said was his answer to OpenAI’s AI-powered search tools.
Elon said that some of the AI’s internal reasoning processes are being deliberately obscured to prevent distillation theft, a controversial method where competitors extract knowledge from AI models.
Meanwhile, OpenAI remains at the center of controversy. Elon co-founded the company in 2015, but his relationship with CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI’s leadership has deteriorated over the years.
Just last week, Elon led an investor group that submitted a $97.4 billion offer to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit parent company—a bid that was rejected.
Grok 3 claims superiority over GPT-4o and DeepSeek’s R1
According to xAI, Grok 3 beats OpenAI’s GPT-4o on key AI benchmarks, outperforming it in math, physics, and computer science. Elon’s AI team also claims that Grok 3 Reasoning is superior to DeepSeek’s R1, the Chinese model that shook the AI industry as well as financial markets in January.
DeepSeek claimed its open-source model could rival OpenAI’s o1 while using far less computing power. China has been facing export restrictions from the US on Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips, limiting its access to cutting-edge hardware.
Despite this, DeepSeek managed to build a highly efficient AI model, raising concerns about how much compute power truly matters in AI development.
In response, xAI has doubled its GPU cluster, now running on 200,000 Nvidia chips—a setup Elon previously referred to as the “Colossus supercomputer” at the Grok 3 launch. According to xAI, this is by far one of the largest AI training infrastructures in the world.
Subscription tiers and future plans
Grok 3 isn’t available to everyone though. Subscribers to X’s Premium+ plan ($50/month) get first access, while a new subscription tier, SuperGrok ($30/month or $300/year), unlocks additional features. SuperGrok users gain access to DeepSearch, enhanced reasoning models, and unlimited AI-generated images.
At the launch, Elon also confirmed that a voice mode is coming soon, allowing users to interact with Grok through spoken conversations. The model will also be available via xAI’s enterprise API, which launches in a few weeks.
“When Grok 3 is mature and stable, we’ll open-source Grok 2,” Elon said. This aligns with xAI’s approach of keeping past versions open-source while retaining proprietary control over the latest models.
Elon first introduced Grok two years ago, branding it as an “anti-woke AI designed to answer questions other chatbots avoided.” But those previous versions of Grok hedged on political issues, with studies showing a left-leaning bias in responses.
Elon blamed the bias on the training data and vowed to make Grok 3 politically neutral. Whether xAI has actually achieved that remains unclear for now.
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