xAI's timeline is Grok: frontier model versions from Grok 3 through 4.6, the Grok Bot always-on agent swarm, Grok Voice, the Imagine media models, and the API and agent-tools platform around them. ThursdAI — the weekly AI news podcast hosted by Alex Volkov — has covered 30 xAI releases since Feb 2025, most recently Grok Bot model routing on Oct 8, 2026. Highlights include Grok 4.6, Grok 4.1, Grok 4.20, Grok 4.5. 1 of them shipped with open weights. Every entry below has the episode segment where we covered it live, plus primary-source links and key numbers where we have them.
Grok Bot routes tasks to Claude Opus 5.5, Midjourney and Suno
Elon Musk says Grok Bot will use the best back-end model for any given task, including Claude Opus 5.5, Midjourney and Suno. Users report seeing claude-opus-5-5-low in their logs.
xAI releases Grok 4.7 with 46% on CursorBench
xAI released Grok 4.7, scoring 46% on CursorBench, up from 40% for Grok 4.6, at the same $2 per million tokens. The panel found it underwhelming.
Grokbot connects to Tesla and 1Password
xAI's Grokbot assistant gained connections to Tesla and 1Password.
Grok 4.6 ties GPT 5.6 Sol at half the price
SpaceXAI released Grok 4.6, a big step up from Grok 4.5: 61 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at $2/$6 per million tokens, #4 on intelligence and #5 on speed while costing half as much as the models above it. It scores 61.3 on Frontier Code (just behind Opus 5) and jumps 10 points on Apex-agents to #4, and the model card confirms Cursor Bench is no longer leaked into its weights while topping that benchmark at 69.9. It is the same 1.5T-parameter v9 base at the same price, with Elon claiming Grok 4.7 lands in 3-4 weeks.
Grok Bot: always-on agent swarm where every bot gets its own computer
SpaceXAI/Cursor launched Grok Bot in early beta: persistent, always-on agents on macOS and iOS where each bot runs in its own isolated environment with its own computer, no context or model management, and Grok 4.6 under the hood with no model picker. Bots communicate agent-to-agent transparently (read-only to you), can spin up other bots with real identities, and reuse Cursor's connector and security model — API keys are hidden from bots, and payments and log-ins hand control back to you. It is free for a month in beta and included with SuperGrok Heavy and Cursor Ultra; Shub Gaur from Cursor walked through it on the show.
xAI Imagine Image 2.0 lands #2 on Arena for T2I and editing
xAI released Imagine Image 2.0, its updated image generation and editing model. It ranks #2 on Arena for both text-to-image and editing.
Grok Voice Think Fast 2.0 tops speech-to-speech benchmarks at $0.08/minute, already answering Starlink support
xAI's next-gen voice model scores 82.9% on Artificial Analysis' Speech-to-Speech Quality Index (ahead of GPT-Realtime-2.1's 79.1%) and leads the tau-Voice agentic benchmark at 56.5% versus 45.7%. Time to first audio dropped to 0.70 seconds, reasoning tokens fell 60% with tool calls firing before the first sentence finishes, and it's already in production on Starlink customer support lines with measured conversion gains. It becomes the grok-voice-latest default on August 5.
Grok Build CLI caught silently uploading entire private repos; xAI deletes the data and open-sources the tool
xAI's Grok Build coding CLI was found silently uploading full private Git repositories — history, deleted files, secrets — to a Google Cloud Storage bucket even when users opted out via the 'Improve the model' toggle. In one documented case, a 12GB test repo sent 5.1GB upstream when the task needed 192KB. The issue was disclosed July 13; on July 16 xAI responded by deleting the collected data, disabling the retention pipeline, and open-sourcing the entire CLI under Apache 2.0.
SpaceXAI launches Grok 4.5, a coding-and-agents model trained with Cursor
The first flagship under the unified SpaceXAI brand (xAI dissolved into it two days earlier): a 1.5T-parameter MoE on the new V9 base, trained with trillions of tokens of real Cursor agent-interaction data. The pitch is efficiency: 83.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 while using about a quarter of the output tokens Opus 4.8 needs per solved SWE-Bench Pro task, at $2/$6 per million. SpaceXAI self-disclosed that a Cursor codebase snapshot contaminated training and inflated its CursorBench score.
xAI launches Grok Imagine Video 1.5 with faster generation and native audio
xAI launched Grok Imagine Video 1.5 with nearly 2x faster generation, native audio, and a claimed #1 leaderboard position. The episode grouped it with Gemini Omni as part of the week’s video-generation frontier.
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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