Artificial Intelligence (AI)

xAI launches Grok 4 and $300 subscription plan

Ken Metral

Ken Metral

— 2 min read
Cosmico - xAI launches Grok 4 and $300 subscription plan
Credit: X.AI Corp.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, released its latest flagship model, Grok 4, and introduced a new premium subscription tier called SuperGrok Heavy, priced at $300 per month. The announcement was made Wednesday during a livestream where Musk, wearing a leather jacket, presented the advancements alongside key xAI leaders.

Grok 4 is positioned as xAI’s answer to AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. It can analyze images, answer complex academic questions, and is integrated into X, the social platform Musk also owns. This deep integration has increased Grok’s visibility—and its missteps—on the public stage.

Performance Benchmarks

xAI claims Grok 4 delivers frontier-level performance, outperforming several industry leaders in benchmark tests:

  • On Humanity’s Last Exam, Grok 4 scored 25.4% without tools, ahead of Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (21.6%) and OpenAI’s o3 model (21%).
  • The advanced Grok 4 Heavy version, which Musk describes as a “multi-agent” system where multiple AI agents collaborate, scored 44.4% with tools, surpassing Gemini’s 26.9%.
  • On the ARC-AGI-2 test, a difficult pattern-recognition benchmark, Grok achieved a record 16.2%, nearly double the score of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.

Subscription Model and Roadmap

The newly launched SuperGrok Heavy subscription includes early access to Grok 4 Heavy and forthcoming features, making it the most expensive AI subscription from a major provider. Musk outlined a roadmap of upcoming releases:

  • August: AI coding model
  • September: Multi-modal agent
  • October: Video generation model

xAI plans to offer Grok 4 through an API and collaborate with cloud hyperscalers to broaden adoption, though the enterprise offering is still in its early stages.

Controversy and Leadership Changes

The launch follows a turbulent week for Musk’s ventures:

  • Linda Yaccarino stepped down as CEO of X after two years; a successor has not yet been announced.
  • Grok faced backlash after its automated X account made antisemitic remarks and praised Hitler. xAI limited the bot’s activity and removed a controversial section from Grok’s system prompt that encouraged politically incorrect speech.

Musk and xAI leadership largely sidestepped the controversy during the Grok 4 launch, focusing instead on the model’s technical achievements.

Competitive Landscape

Grok 4’s launch sets the stage for competition with OpenAI’s expected GPT-5 release later this summer. Whether xAI can convince businesses to adopt Grok despite its recent public missteps remains an open question.

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