Final week, Elon Musk posted one other daring declare on X:
It’s straightforward to dismiss this as traditional Musk. In any case, he’s been identified to make sweeping statements about his personal tech that always include extra hype than substance.
However right here’s the factor…
This time, he is likely to be proper.
Pace Like No Different
Previously six months, xAI has launched three main fashions: Grok 3, Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy.
To place that in perspective, OpenAI took almost a 12 months to maneuver from GPT-4 to GPT-4o. Google’s Gemini 1 debuted in late 2023, however Gemini 2.0 didn’t arrive till early 2025. And Anthropic’s Claude sequence has had regular releases, however they’ve been nowhere close to this aggressive.
In different phrases, Musk’s group is iterating at a tempo that the remainder of the trade isn’t matching.
And that’s largely as a result of Colossus, xAI’s GPU supercomputer.
Nvidia’s H100 chips are the gold normal for coaching AI fashions, however international demand has created a scarcity. Musk anticipated this crunch and secured huge H100 orders early via Tesla and SpaceX.
By funneling these chips into xAI, he gave Grok entry to extra uncooked compute than most of his rivals can dare to dream of.
When Grok 3 was launched in February, it was educated utilizing 10 instances extra compute than Grok 2.
By July, simply 5 months later, Grok 4 Heavy was stay and positioned as a frontier-class mannequin that might compete with anything available on the market.
And on paper, Grok 4 Heavy is a serious step ahead.
It scored 44.4% on Humanity’s Final Examination, a notoriously powerful benchmark designed to measure reasoning underneath stress.
Supply: https://x.com/Prashant_1722
That positioned it forward of Google’s Gemini 2.5 Professional and OpenAI’s o3.
For subscribers keen to pay $300 a month, xAI even affords “SuperGrok Heavy.” To me, this premium providing proves that Musk places a excessive worth on uncooked efficiency.
However velocity and efficiency aren’t the one differentiators right here.
You see, Musk wired Grok immediately into X. Which means thousands and thousands of customers stress-test the system in full view of the world day by day.
That’s a high-risk, high-reward technique.
On the plus facet, it offers xAI a suggestions loop that’s extra public and unfiltered than something its rivals permit. And since it pulls immediately from the firehose of X information, Grok is ready to keep culturally related in methods its rivals can’t.
However the draw back is painfully apparent.
While you construct in public, you can too fail in public. And Grok has taken some large “L”s.
Earlier this 12 months, Grok generated antisemitic content material, together with one notorious second the place it described itself as “MechaHitler.”
Musk blamed it on a regression bug.
And simply this month, Grok’s important account was suspended after it posted hate speech associated to genocide.
Musk known as it a “dumb error.”
However for critics, these incidents are proof that Grok’s security methods lag behind its velocity.
And its issues don’t cease there.
Lately, studies present that Grok’s “share” function left over 300,000 person conversations uncovered to search engines like google and yahoo, together with many who had been by no means meant to be public.
A few of them contained harmful content material, like bomb-making directions, recommendation on self-harm and even assassination plots in opposition to Musk.
It is a clear failure of privateness and content material management. And it highlights one of many largest challenges within the AI race…
Benchmarks matter, however belief issues extra.
Benchmarks can’t erase reputational harm. They usually don’t fulfill regulators both.
That’s why OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic all make investments closely in alignment groups and security exams designed to catch dangerous habits early. They’ve additionally labored carefully with U.S. and European regulators on AI security requirements.
That’s simply good enterprise.
As a result of companies and governments solely wish to work with AI fashions that they consider are protected, predictable and aligned with regulatory frameworks.
However Musk tends to deal with laws as roadblocks.
That may win him followers on X. It’d even be what’s required to beat China to synthetic superintelligence (ASI).
But it surely may additionally shut xAI out of precisely the sorts of enterprise and authorities offers that determine who wins the AI race.
Due to this, I consider OpenAI, Google and Anthropic nonetheless maintain a bonus.
So the place does that go away Musk’s declare?
Proper now, xAI is sprinting forward on iteration velocity, utilizing sheer compute energy to shut the hole. And that’s one thing his opponents ought to be fearful about.
However the AI race is a marathon, not a dash.
OpenAI already has deep enterprise adoption via Microsoft, placing its fashions inside every thing from Azure to Phrase.
Google bundles Gemini throughout Gmail, Docs and Search, and now it’s integrating into the Android working system because the alternative for Google Assistant.
In the meantime, Anthropic has Amazon behind it, with Claude built-in into AWS.
These are ecosystems. And ecosystems can create moats round companies.
However for now, Musk solely has X.
As we’ve talked about earlier than, for xAI to “outpace” its rivals, Grok might want to scale past a single social platform.
As a result of velocity alone gained’t win the AI race.
Right here’s My Take
Elon claims Grok is evolving sooner than another AI.
And I agree with him.
xAI has confirmed it may possibly transfer sooner than anybody else. And if Grok continues to put up benchmark positive aspects at this tempo, the remainder of the trade may find yourself chasing its lead.
However to win the AI race, Musk might want to show that Grok has endurance. And that can come from the affected person work of proving that his AI is protected and enterprise-ready.
If he can do this, his latest put up gained’t appear to be hyperbole in any respect.
But when he can’t, then Grok may find yourself being remembered because the quickest runner in a race of its personal.
For buyers, although, it doesn’t essentially matter who wins this race….
So long as you might be invested within the infrastructure and energy wanted to maintain it working.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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