Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI unveiled Grok 3 today, showcasing significant improvements in reasoning capabilities and introducing new features like “Big Brain” mode and DeepSearch, while simultaneously raising prices for access to the technology.
Why it matters: The release changes the AI competitive landscape by introducing a model trained on 200,000 GPUs – representing computing power ten times greater than its predecessor – while claiming superior performance over rivals like GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini.
Technical Innovation: Grok 3 introduces several breakthrough capabilities that set new standards for AI performance:
- Advanced reasoning modes for complex problems
- Real-time internet search and analysis
- Specialized mini models for faster responses
Market Impact: The launch coincides with significant changes to xAI’s pricing structure:
- X Premium+ subscription increases to $50 monthly
- New SuperGrok tier at $30 monthly
- Annual plans ranging from $350-$395
The model’s release marks xAI’s most ambitious attempt to compete with industry leaders, featuring a family of specialized models including Grok 3 mini for faster responses and dedicated reasoning variants for complex problem-solving.
“Grok 3 is an order of magnitude more capable than Grok 2,” Musk said during Monday’s livestreamed presentation. “[It’s a] maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”
The company claims Grok 3 has achieved unprecedented scores on industry benchmarks, becoming the first AI to break the 1400-point threshold on the Chatbot Arena evaluation platform.
Looking ahead, xAI plans to add voice interaction features within weeks and will make the technology available to enterprises through an API. The company also intends to open-source Grok 2 once Grok 3 achieves stability.
