Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has introduced Grok-3, the latest iteration of its chatbot, aiming to compete with AI giants like Chinese firm DeepSeek, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and Alphabet’s Google.
The launch of Grok-3 comes at a critical moment in the AI arms race, just days after DeepSeek unveiled its powerful open-source model, while Musk aggressively moves to expand xAI’s influence.
The chatbot is immediately available to Premium+ subscribers on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. xAI is also launching a new subscription tier, SuperGrok, for users accessing the chatbot via its mobile app and Grok.com website.
“Grok-3 across the board is in a league of its own,” Musk said during a livestream alongside three xAI engineers late Monday, adding that the model significantly outperforms its predecessor, Grok-2.
Musk’s ambitious push in AI comes as a consortium of investors led by Musk offered $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit assets last week, an offer that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI rejected. On Monday, Musk reiterated xAI’s commitment to open-source AI, stating that earlier versions of Grok would be made publicly available once the latest model reaches full maturity. He expects Grok-3 to reach that benchmark in a few months.
The new release also introduces a smart search engine called DeepSearch, described as a reasoning-based chatbot that articulates its thought process when responding to user queries. Demonstrated during the livestream, the tool offers functions for research, brainstorming, and data analysis.
As competition in the AI sector intensifies, xAI is ramping up its data center capacity to train more advanced models. Bloomberg News reported last week that the startup is in talks to raise up to $10 billion in funding, which could value the company at around $75 billion.
