Artificial intelligence is advancing at lightning speed, and Elon Musk’s company, XAI, has just raised the bar with its latest model: Grock 3. According to Musk and XAI’s engineers, Grock 3 is 10 times more powerful than its predecessor, Grock 2. This leap in performance comes from training the model in a massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, equipped with 200,000 GPUs—a supercomputer some call “The Colossus.”
Grock 3 vs. The Competition
How does Grock 3 stack up against competitors like OpenAI’s GPT-4.0, Google’s Gemini, and DeepSeek’s models? According to internal benchmarks from XAI, Grock 3 outperforms its rivals in math, science, coding, and problem-solving. Notably, it excelled in benchmarks like AIM (Advanced Institute of Mathematics competition) and GPQA (PhD-level questions in physics, biology, and chemistry). Even the smaller versions of Grock 3 rank highly in Chatbot Arena, where different AI models face off in head-to-head challenges judged by real human voters.
A Family of Models for Different Needs
Grock 3 is not a single model—it’s a family of AI systems designed for different tasks:
- Grock 3 Reasoning: Built for complex thought processes using chain-of-thought prompting.
- Grock 3 Mini Reasoning: A lighter version of the reasoning model.
- Standard Grock 3 and Grock 3 Mini: General-purpose models optimized for speed and efficiency.
While Grock 3’s reasoning models are designed to explain their thought processes, some parts of their internal logic are hidden to prevent “dilation”—a technique where developers attempt to extract knowledge from advanced models.
Key Features and Accessibility
Grock 3 is integrated into Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and is also accessible via the Grock.com website and a dedicated iOS app. Users subscribed to X Premium Plus can access Grock 3 immediately. XAI is also introducing a premium tier called Super Grock, which is rumored to cost around $30/month or $300/year, though pricing details are not yet confirmed.
Some standout features include:
- Deep Search: Grock’s advanced research tool that scans the internet and X platform to provide detailed summaries, with the option to filter results by specific websites.
- Big Brain Mode: Allows Grock 3 to spend more time processing queries, delivering more comprehensive answers—especially useful for advanced science and coding problems.
- Voice Mode: Coming soon, this feature will enable users to interact with Grock 3 using spoken commands, with responses delivered in a synthesized voice.
Real-World Applications
During a live demo, XAI showcased Grock 3’s capabilities by planning a hypothetical space mission from Earth to Mars (unsurprising, given Musk’s SpaceX ambitions). The AI also coded a mini-game described as a blend of Tetris and Bejeweled, hinting at its potential for game development and coding tasks. Additionally, Grock 3 demonstrated advanced real-time problem-solving in math and science, along with generating and analyzing images—putting it on par with multimodal systems like GPT-4 and Google Gemini.
The Race for AI Dominance
Grock 3’s launch marks a new chapter in the competitive AI landscape. Elon Musk recently filed lawsuits against OpenAI, alleging that the company has deviated from its original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity. Musk even offered to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit arm for $974 million, an offer that was declined by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Meanwhile, both XAI and OpenAI are seeking massive investments: XAI is reportedly aiming to raise $10 billion, which would value the company at $75 billion, while OpenAI is looking to raise $4 billion at a valuation that could reach $300 billion.
What’s Next for Grock 3?
To stay competitive, Musk has stated that XAI plans to open-source Grock 2 once Grock 3 is stable and mature—a strategy aligned with the company’s practice of releasing older models to the public. On the hardware front, XAI is reportedly close to securing a $5 billion deal with Dell Technologies for AI-optimized servers, ensuring it can scale up operations to support future advancements.
Final Thoughts
Grock 3’s release signals a new era of AI capabilities, with breakthroughs in reasoning, problem-solving, and multimodal tasks. As the AI arms race intensifies, the rivalry between XAI, OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek will likely lead to even faster innovations. Whether you’re a developer, researcher, or tech enthusiast, Grock 3 is a game-changing tool that’s poised to reshape how we interact with artificial intelligence.
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