20 releases covered on ThursdAI · x.ai ↗
xAI releases Grok Imagine Video 1.5 Preview with synced audio
xAI released a preview of Grok Imagine Video 1.5, an image-to-video model that generates clips with synchronized audio. It adds xAI to the week's crowded race of media-generation model updates.
xAI launches Grok Build, an agentic CLI coding tool in beta
xAI launched Grok Build, an agentic CLI coding tool, in beta for SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. It joins the crowded field of terminal-based coding agents as xAI's entry into agentic engineering tooling.
Grok Imagine update: better lip sync, sound, 30s video extensions
xAI shipped a Grok Imagine update with dramatically improved lip sync and sound. It also adds 30-second video extensions.
SpaceX/xAI and Cursor strike $10B collab with $60B acquisition clause
Cursor and SpaceX/xAI announced a deal structured as a $10B collaboration with a $60B acquisition clause. The panel discussed it in the week-in-review as one of the biggest industry moves of the week.
xAI launches Grok TTS API with 5 voices and WebSocket streaming
xAI launched a Grok Text-to-Speech API with five voices, expressive controls, and WebSocket streaming, priced cheaper than ElevenLabs. It adds another option to a suddenly competitive voice AI market alongside open-source entrants like Fish Audio S2.
xAI silently drops Grok 4.20 with four 500B-param collaborating agents
xAI released Grok 4.20, a multi-agent system where four 500B-parameter agents collaborate in a multi-agent UI, with a $300/month Heavy tier scaling to 16 agents. No benchmarks or evals were released with the drop. The panel found it underwhelming for coding and day-to-day agent work but still top tier for deep research thanks to xAI's RAG over X data; Grok 4.1 Fast remains #8 on OpenRouter by API usage.
Grok Imagine 1.0 tops video arena with native audio and lip sync
xAI launched Grok Imagine 1.0 with 10-second 720p video generation, native audio, and lip sync, taking the #1 spot on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video arena. Generation costs roughly $0.42 per 10-second clip and an API is available.
xAI launches Grok Imagine API with video generation
xAI released the Grok Imagine API, exposing its image and video generation capabilities to developers through the xAI console. The show subtitle notes Grok Imagine ranking #1 among generation models this week.
xAI raises $20B Series E at $230B valuation with NVIDIA backing
xAI raised a $20B Series E at a $230B valuation with NVIDIA and Cisco as strategic investors, even as Grok faced major backlash over its image model's lack of NSFW guardrails ('bikini-gate'). The company claimed 600M active users by counting all X users.
xAI Grok Voice Agent API ships at $0.05/min flat rate, powers Tesla
xAI launched the Grok Voice Agent API with flat-rate pricing of $0.05 per minute and integration into Tesla vehicles. xAI claims the #1 spot on Big Bench Audio at 92.3%, tightening competition in the rapidly commoditizing real-time voice stack.
Grok 4.1 briefly tops LM Arena with major post-training upgrade
xAI's Grok 4.1 shipped in November alongside GPT-5.1 and Claude Opus 4.5 in the year's most concentrated stretch of frontier releases. Yam highlighted the week-and-a-half window as emblematic of 2025's relentless acceleration.
Grok 4.1 Fast: 2M context and Agent Tools API at 10x lower cost
Launched as breaking news during the show, Grok 4.1 Fast pairs a 2 million token context window with a new Agent Tools API offering native X search, Reddit search, web browsing, and code execution. Benchmarks are striking: 93-100% on tau2-Bench Telecom and 72% on Berkeley Function Calling v4 (top of the leaderboard) at $0.20/$0.50 per million tokens — roughly 10x cheaper than competitors, and free for the first two weeks on the xAI API and OpenRouter.
Grok 4 Fast expands to a 2 million token context window
xAI's Grok 4 Fast now supports a 2 million token context window, one of the largest of any frontier model. The crew called the jump 'crazy' and discussed what such long context unlocks for agentic and document-heavy workloads.
xAI ships Grok 4 Fast with 2M context at a fraction of the cost
xAI released Grok 4 Fast, a cost-efficient model with a 2M token context window that unifies reasoning and non-reasoning behavior in one set of weights and prices far below Grok 4. The panel treated it as part of the larger competitive pressure cycle on price and speed among frontier labs.
Grok Code 1 takes ~50% of coding traffic on OpenRouter
xAI's new Grok Code 1 coding model rocketed to roughly 50% of all coding traffic on OpenRouter shortly after launch, helped by a free promotional period and fast, cheap inference. The panel discussed it as evidence that the coding-model market is highly price- and speed-sensitive.
xAI finally launches the Grok 3 API tier
xAI made Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini available via API, giving developers programmatic access to its frontier models for the first time. The Grok app also received updates the same week.
Grok Voice mode opens up to free users
xAI made Grok's voice mode available to free users, removing the paid-tier requirement. The expansion brings conversational voice AI to everyone on the Grok app.
xAI ships Grok's unhinged voice mode
A week after launching Grok 3 without voice, xAI released Grok's voice mode, including an 'unhinged' personality option that the panel demoed live. It marks xAI's entry into real-time conversational voice AI alongside OpenAI's advanced voice mode.
xAI launches DeepSearch, an agentic research feature with live X access
Alongside Grok 3, xAI launched DeepSearch, an agentic deep-research feature comparable to Perplexity or OpenAI's Deep Research, with a leg up on real-time information thanks to native access to X search. Alex's initial tests were underwhelming, nicknaming it 'Shallow Search' after it spent 34 seconds on a query where OpenAI's Deep Research took 11 minutes and cited 17 sources.
xAI launches Grok 3, claiming SOTA benchmarks and a 1M token context window
xAI dropped Grok 3 on Monday evening, claiming state-of-the-art performance on several benchmarks and a 1 million token context window, with heavy emphasis on agents and future reasoners. The launch was messy, with a bug serving Grok 2 to some users and an eval-methodology spat with OpenAI over best-of-N scores, but vibes shifted positive, with co-hosts calling the base model the best coding model out. It is free for now, 'until their GPUs melt', with no API yet for independent evaluation.
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