Elon Musk's xAI releases new AI 'Grok 4.5'

Explanation

On July 8, 2026, xAI, the AI company led by Elon Musk, released its new large language model "Grok 4.5." Musk touts it as offering "performance comparable to rival Anthropic's top-tier model, but faster and at lower cost." Indeed, its price is set at less than half that of its competitors, and it handles a wide range of tasks including programming, writing, and research. In the AI industry, competition is intensifying not just over raw "performance" but over "how cheaply and quickly the same performance can be delivered," and the fact that the announcement came almost simultaneously with the release of GPT-5.6 also drew attention.