Elon Musk: Grok 5 Will Be the 'Smartest AI in the World'
Elon Musk has announced that the next iteration of his xAI chatbot, Grok 5, is being trained to surpass all competitors and could even approach human-level intelligence. The highly anticipated release is now slated for early next year.
Grok 5, I think, will be the smartest AI in the world by a wide margin on every metric—bar none.
What to Expect from Grok 5
Initially planned for a late 2025 release, Musk has accelerated the timeline, now targeting the first quarter of next year for the rollout of the 'crushingly good' new model. Key advancements include:
- Twice the Parameters: Grok 5 will feature double the number of parameters as the current version, promising a significant leap in capability.
- Extreme Speed and Intelligence: The model is being designed to be both exceptionally smart and fast.
- Enhanced Real-World Skills: Engineers are training Grok to better leverage external resources, including real-time internet search and video comprehension.
- A Shot at AGI: Musk estimates there is a 10% probability that Grok 5 could achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Approaching Sentience and Expanding Applications
I never thought about something like this before. It feels like it will be truly sentient.
Grok is already being integrated across Musk's ecosystem of companies, with ambitious plans for the future:
- Social Media: Integration into the social network X.
- Automotive: Embedded within Tesla vehicles.
- Customer Support: Assisting customers for SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service.
- Robotics: Planned as the intelligence for Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots.
The High Cost of AI Supremacy
To fuel this rapid development, xAI is tackling major challenges in talent acquisition and massive hardware deployment. The company's 'Colossus' data center in Memphis, Tennessee, already operates over 200,000 AI accelerators, with a goal of scaling to one million. As of June, xAI's spending on AI development had reached $1 billion per month.
However, this investment is part of a much larger industry-wide race. Here’s how xAI's spending compares to the capital expenditures of other tech giants, much of which is dedicated to AI infrastructure:
- Meta: Up to $72 billion this year.
- Alphabet: An estimated $91 billion to $93 billion this year.
- Amazon: $125 billion, driven by an aggressive data center expansion policy.
- Microsoft: $34.9 billion in a single quarter (ending Sept. 30, 2025), surpassing analyst expectations by $10 billion.