As Elon Musk’s xAI and others like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT compete for market share,, Elon Musk has made bold statements about his company’s AI division, xAI. He believes that if xAI can navigate the next two to three years and survive, it could become more successful than its competitors. Musk has also claimed that the company could achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), capable of matching or even surpassing human intelligence, within the next few years, possibly as early as 2026.
Elon Musk expects Grok 5 to launch within a few months.(AFP)
According to a report by Business Insider, Musk has told xAI staff that the company is the driver’s seat with funding of around $20–30 billion per year. Musk has also been vocal about Grok in recent times, particularly on X, stating that the AI has made significant progress compared to where it stood a year ago. He has also shared timelines for upcoming updates, openly stating that Grok 4.2 is expected to launch in about three weeks, a claim he made on December 10. He further expects Grok 5 to launch within a few months.
xAI has strong distribution going for it
It remains to be seen what xAI ultimately brings to the table. That said, distribution appears to be a strong point, as the Grok AI bot is now available in Tesla vehicles as well. Since Tesla is also owned by Elon Musk, this integration comes as little surprise. In Tesla vehicles, users can interact with Grok hands-free, choose different voices and personalities, ask it to tell stories, switch to an unfiltered mode, and even use it for navigation by searching for destinations. All of this can be done without touching the touchscreen.
However, Grok is currently in beta on Tesla vehicles and is not available on all models. It is limited to the Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, and Cybertruck that are equipped with an AMD processor, are running vehicle software version 2025.26 or later, and have either premium connectivity or an active Wi-Fi connection.
Alongside this, xAI’s Grok has managed to tap into a different user base by introducing adult bots such as Ani on Grok, along with other characters that allow for explicit chats. This is an area that rivals like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have yet to catch up on, although they have discussed it.