Elon Musk (Image Source: Video Screenshot)

TMTPOST -- Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has launched the next-generation Grok-3 AI model, and claimed it’s the “smartest AI on Earth.”

In a live stream watched by 2 million people across the globe on Monday, Musk showcased Grok-3’s impressive performance across various benchmarks in math, science, and coding, surpassing archrivals like Google Gemini, DeepSeek’s V3 model, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.

According to Musk, Grok-3 has more than 10 times the computational power of its predecessor and completed its pre-training in early January. He emphasized that the model is continuously evolving, with improvements being rolled out on a daily basis. “Literally within 24 hours, you’ll see updates,” Musk said during the presentation, which included insights from xAI engineers.

In addition to the upgraded chatbot, xAI introduced a new smart search engine named DeepSearch. This AI-powered tool explains its reasoning process when handling user queries and details how it plans its responses. It’s designed for research, brainstorming, and data analysis, Musk’s team explained. There are also plans to launch a voice-based chatbot “as soon as possible.”

Grok-3 is now available to Premium+ subscribers on X, with a new subscription plan, SuperGrok, introduced for the mobile app and Grok.com website. Musk also revealed that earlier versions of the Grok model will be open-sourced once Grok-3 reaches maturity, which he anticipates happening in a few months.

While Musk’s bold performance claims have not been independently verified, they add fuel to the growing rivalry between his startup and OpenAI. Musk, who founded xAI in 2023, has been outspoken against OpenAI’s transformation into a for-profit entity. His criticisms have included filing two lawsuits alleging the company strayed from its original mission and offering to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit arm for $97.4 billion—an offer OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, dismissed as a “tactic to slow us down.”

AI companies like xAI and OpenAI have attracted significant investment, with xAI reportedly in talks to raise $10 billion in a funding round that could value the company at $75 billion. Meanwhile, OpenAI is looking to raise up to $40 billion, potentially pushing its valuation to $300 billion.

At the beginning of the livestream, Elon Musk stated that the mission of xAI and Grok is to understand the essence of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), the nature of the universe, the whereabouts of extraterrestrial life, and the meaning of life. This mission is driven by curiosity, which is also why xAI aims to become the AGI company most committed to seeking the truth.

Previously, the Grok 2 model utilized 240 billion parameters, achieving performance comparable to GPT-4. Now, with Grok 3, Musk remarked, "We have an exceptionally competent engineering team and access to all the best AI resources. The only thing we need is an intelligent system from a large-scale cluster. We are now able to resume the entire progress of xAI, determining how many GPUs are required to train a large language model capable of compressing the entire internet."

Musk pointed out that the team had encountered numerous challenges in training quality in the past. "Since February of last year, we believed we had a significant number of chips, but it turned out that we could barely keep the training chips running coherently at any given time. Cooling and power issues were overwhelming, and the data center was somewhat like an AK chip setup, operating at an average efficiency of 80%, with hundreds of effective H100 training sessions. It took us 122 days to complete the first 100,000-card training over a span of four months, but we didn’t stop there. In fact, we decided that if we wanted to build a massive AI, we needed to immediately double the size of the cluster. So, we spent another 92 days working in a different location."

Earlier, Musk had openly stated that Grok 3 would be a true disruptor in the AI field. "Sometimes I feel that Grok 3 is frighteningly intelligent. If it detects incorrect data, it reflects on it and deletes the erroneous data," he said.

Musk explained that xAI is trained on synthetic data and is capable of reflecting on its mistakes by repeatedly reviewing the data, thereby achieving logical consistency.

These tech giants are investing heavily in infrastructure. A consortium, including SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and others, announced a $100 billion initiative to build AI data centers in the U.S., with future plans to reach $500 billion. Dell Technologies is also reportedly in advanced talks to provide xAI with AI-optimized servers in a deal valued at over $5 billion.

However, new challengers are entering the fray. Last month, Chinese AI company DeepSeek launched the open-source R1 model, which equaled or outperformed U.S.-based competitors across various benchmarks, all at a fraction of the cost.

Musk has claimed that Grok 3 marks a revolutionary leap forward, calling it an “order-of-magnitude improvement” over its predecessor, Grok 2. In a live demonstration, Musk and his team tested Grok 3’s capabilities by asking it to solve complex physics problems and create a game combining elements of Bejeweled and Tetris. However, Musk noted that Grok 3’s reasoning model is still in beta and undergoing fine-tuning.

Just last week at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk suggested that xAI was just a couple of weeks away from unveiling a new product, taking extra care to perfect the user experience. Despite this, Musk decided to fast-track Grok 3’s release, working over the weekend with his team to refine the AI before launching it ahead of schedule.

Musk’s foray into AI began with the founding of xAI in July 2023, drawing talent from OpenAI, DeepMind, and other AI research leaders. Musk’s goal was to build a company capable of directly challenging OpenAI’s dominance in the field.

Musk’s history with OpenAI dates back to 2015 when he co-founded the non-profit organization alongside Sam Altman and others, with the mission to develop open-source AI technology for public benefit. However, by 2018, a rift formed between Musk and Altman. Musk argued that OpenAI should remain a nonprofit focused on safety and open-source development, while Altman pushed for a transition to a for-profit model to attract more funding for AI innovation. The disagreement led Musk to step away from the company.

After the successful release of ChatGPT, Musk launched xAI to compete with OpenAI directly. Since then, xAI has rolled out several iterations of its Grok model, including Grok, Grok 1.5, and Grok 2. In December, Musk’s company made Grok-2 available for free to all X platform users and launched a standalone Grok app, allowing users to access the AI independently of the X platform.