Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, has unveiled its latest AI model, Grok 3, claiming it outperforms competitors like OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek in early testing. The announcement, made during a live-streamed demonstration on Musk’s social media platform X, highlighted Grok 3’s capabilities in math, science, and coding and its advanced reasoning skills.
“We’re very excited to present Grok 3, which is, we think, an order of magnitude more capable than Grok 2 in a very short period,” Musk said during the event. The xAI team also introduced a new product called “Deep Search,” which is described as a “next-generation search engine.”
Grok 3 will initially be available to premium X subscribers in the U.S. starting Tuesday, with access also offered through a separate subscription for its web and app versions.
A ‘Scary Smart’ AI
Musk had previously teased Grok 3’s capabilities at The World Governments Summit in Dubai last week, calling it “scary smart” and claiming it outperformed all existing models in xAI’s internal tests. “This might be the last time that an AI is better than Grok,” he said, adding that the model was trained on “a lot of synthetic data” and could reflect on its mistakes to achieve logical consistency.
The xAI team also revealed that an early version of Grok 3 received higher ratings than competitors on Chatbot Arena, a platform that crowdsources blind tests of AI models.
Despite the bold claims, Musk acknowledged that Grok 3 is still in its beta phase. “You should expect some imperfections at first, but we will improve it rapidly, almost every day,” he said, noting that a voice assistant feature for the model would be released later.
Intensifying AI Competition
Musk launched xAI in 2023, entering the highly competitive generative AI market dominated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI’s most advanced model, the o1, released in September 2023, set a high bar with its ability to solve complex tasks in science, coding, and math.
The rivalry between Musk and OpenAI has grown increasingly contentious. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, recently led an investor group in a $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit parent—a proposal that was declined.
Meanwhile, Chinese startup DeepSeek has emerged as a formidable competitor, shocking the AI community last month with claims that its open-source model could rival OpenAI’s o1 despite using less advanced and more cost-effective technology. DeepSeek’s achievements are particularly notable given U.S. restrictions on the sale of cutting-edge Nvidia GPUs to China, which are critical for training AI models.
xAI, on the other hand, has access to significant computational resources. The company revealed that it doubled the size of its GPU cluster, now utilizing 100,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs, to train Grok 3.
Skepticism and Optimism
While some experts believe DeepSeek has intensified competition by demonstrating what’s possible with less advanced technology, others remain skeptical about its long-term impact. Grok 3’s release adds another layer to the ongoing AI arms race, with Musk positioning xAI as a leader in innovation.
As Grok 3 rolls out, the AI community will be watching closely to see if it can deliver on its promises and reshape the future of artificial intelligence. With advancements in reasoning, search capabilities, and rapid iteration, xAI is betting big on Grok 3 to set a new standard in the AI landscape.
