Can someone explain to me what's the point of Grok anymore? I don't understand why we need a third or fourth closed frontier model. It is clear that chatGPT has locked down the consumer play, and may be Gemini is there. Claude has enterprise locked up, followed by chatGPT and Gemini. Enterprise switching costs are notoriously high, and even if they switch, they have chatGPT or Gemini to choose from. Beyond that, you have a vast array of open source models (DeepSeek, Kimi, and now Meta's Spark and Glimmer). So, why would anyone need a third or fourth frontier model and why would SpaceX spends billions in CapEx for a very small market share

There are a few reasons people will be interested...

1. The CapEx play is interesting because it's not just Grok using the hardware. They have rented out hardware for others, including Google, to use. This is making xAI money.

2. It appears that Elon is building a suite of things that work together as part of the push to be multi-planetary. What AI will power the robots? I can understand the drive to have AI they can control to make sure it's appropriate for all the things they are dreaming up. This is a piece they don't want to outsource.

3. OpenAI and Anthropic models are expensive in terms of token costs. Sure, they are frontier. Neither appears to be trying to drive down expenses. This is a problem for heavy users. Companies are trying to put cost controls in place. Does the rest of SpaceX want those cost controls? Having a Frontier model that pushes the pace of driving down costs is really useful.

4. OpenAI and Anthropic are producing models with a progressive lean, according to the Neutrality Project [1]. Having a frontier model that is closer to the middle is considered a good thing by many who are noticing the bias.

These are just some of the reasons. Competition is often a good thing that drives useful change.

[1] https://neutralityproject.org/

Competition keeps service quality high and pricing low - even if you aren't using Grok, the mere existence of Grok keeps pricing for whatever provider you use lower and service faster and more reliable.

I assume SpaceX does it because they figure it's a good source of revenue, and it means they can keep another thing in-house instead of relying on Anthropic or OpenAI for their AI needs.

As for why anyone else would want it: I've found it's a good model for coding, and it sometimes catches bugs that other models (especially open source models) don't always spot.

Why do we need Nissan? Three car companies are plenty.

grok offers a team subscription which respects user privacy and does not send your prompts out to a team for moderation.

that alone makes it the closed source subscription i would choose. claude and openai are spying on you.

as it stands i don't have it because the reasoning is encrypted, so i feel that it still is not working for me, it's two faced.

I sense a lot of condescension and lack of business acumen so I won't spend time writing it up, why don't you just ask your favorite AI or do some basic google searches? Elon was extremely upfront about the philosophical reasons for it, ever since he cofounded OpenAI.

Grok has 100% market share in Tesla Car AI. Grok is used for that, might as well make some extra money on the side.

Inference switching costs aren't high since the models are largely fungible. Even with proprietary harnesses you can hack them to use some other lab's model.

Its a bet for future world dominance by Elon: millions of robots managed by AI. Base on some observations I think something like that is going in his head.

Bro looked at the US two party system and said “this is what we should model everything off of”