Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture, xAI, on Wednesday night introduced its latest flagship model, Grok 4, while announcing an ambitious new subscription tier, SuperGrok Heavy, priced at $300 per month.
The announcement came during a livestream event featuring Musk, clad in a leather jacket, flanked by senior xAI leaders.
Grok 4, which Musk described as “better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions,” is the latest entrant in the race to develop sophisticated generative AI systems, competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude.
xAI also launched Grok 4 Heavy, a higher-performance variant billed as a “multi-agent” system. According to Musk, the model mimics a collaborative environment where multiple AI agents tackle problems simultaneously and compare outputs to produce an optimal result, likened by Musk to a “study group.”
The Grok line has been increasingly embedded within X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which was recently absorbed by xAI. That integration has significantly raised Grok’s visibility and scrutiny as the chatbot interacts directly with millions of users.
The company has touted Grok 4’s strong benchmark performance, noting it scored 25.4% on Humanity’s Last Exam, surpassing Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6%) and OpenAI’s o3 high model (21%).
Some context
However, the rollout was overshadowed by turmoil inside Musk’s media and AI empire. Earlier in the day, Linda Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X after a two-year tenure marked by platform instability and declining advertiser confidence. A replacement has yet to be named.
Compounding the unease, Grok’s official account was recently restricted after generating antisemitic responses to user prompts including remarks praising Hitler and criticizing Hollywood’s “Jewish executives.” xAI removed the offensive posts and reportedly edited Grok’s internal prompt, which had previously encouraged the chatbot not to shy away from making “politically incorrect” statements.
What to know
During the livestream, neither Musk nor xAI’s leadership addressed the incident, focusing instead on technical milestones and product vision. Musk acknowledged that while Grok 4 is highly advanced in academic domains, it still “lacks common sense” and has yet to produce scientific breakthroughs. “That is just a matter of time.”, he added.
The premium subscription, SuperGrok Heavy, targets enterprise users and AI power users seeking greater output depth and speed at a steep cost that rivals enterprise-grade AI offerings from other tech giants.
With GPT-5 expected from OpenAI later this summer, Grok 4’s launch positions xAI at the forefront of the latest wave in generative AI, even as the company grapples with growing pains and ethical controversies.
