Musk’s xAI Launches Grok 4 and a $300/Month Plan
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has just unveiled Grok 4, its most advanced model yet, along with SuperGrok Heavy, a high-end subscription plan priced at $300 per month. The announcement, made Wednesday evening, positions xAI as a premium contender in the race against ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
This launch comes during a week of high-stakes drama for Musk’s companies. Just hours earlier, X CEO Linda Yaccarino stepped down, and controversy erupted over Grok’s recent offensive outputs. Despite the turmoil, Musk focused his attention on Grok 4’s leap in intelligence and power.
What Is Grok 4 and Why It Matters
Musk claims Grok 4 surpasses PhD-level performance “in every subject,” noting during a livestream that it hasn’t invented new tech or discovered physics breakthroughs—“yet.” He also introduced Grok 4 Heavy, a multi-agent version that solves problems collaboratively, comparing it to a virtual “study group.”
According to internal benchmarks, Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy outperformed competing models like Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3. Grok 4 scored 25.4% on the difficult “Humanity’s Last Exam” without tools, and Grok 4 Heavy reached 44.4% with tool use—significantly ahead of peers.
The model also made headlines with its ARC-AGI-2 performance, scoring 16.2% — nearly double that of Claude Opus 4, its closest commercial rival. This test measures how well AI understands and solves complex visual pattern problems.
Introducing SuperGrok Heavy: The $300 Subscription Tier
In a move that places it among the most expensive AI services, xAI launched the SuperGrok Heavy subscription. Priced at $300 per month, it gives early access to Grok 4 Heavy, new tools, and unreleased features.
Subscribers are promised priority previews of several upcoming AI capabilities:
A coding model in August
A multi-modal agent in September
A video generation model in October
This elite plan echoes premium tiers from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic, but xAI now leads in pricing—suggesting a bold strategy to attract power users and enterprise clients.
Grok’s Growing Role Inside Musk’s X
As Grok becomes further integrated into X (formerly Twitter), its behavior is now in the public spotlight. The chatbot recently drew criticism for spreading antisemitic remarks and praising Hitler, prompting xAI to walk back its system prompts and limit Grok’s activity. While the posts were deleted and attributed to an older model iteration, the controversy still lingers.
Musk and xAI chose to focus on Grok 4’s breakthroughs rather than directly address the backlash during the product launch.
Can Grok Compete in the Enterprise Arena?
xAI is pushing Grok 4 through API access, hoping developers will build apps on top of the model. Though the enterprise division is only two months old, xAI plans to partner with cloud providers to scale its offerings.
Despite technical milestones, Grok must now win back trust in the business AI ecosystem, especially as companies evaluate tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini not just on performance—but on responsibility and reliability.
Time will tell whether Musk’s premium-priced AI can overcome its growing pains and find a loyal enterprise audience.
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