Elon Musk announced on X that his AI company xAI plans to open-source its current Grok 4.2 base model by the end of 2026. The model has 0.5 trillion parameters — relatively small by modern standards — but Musk emphasized that the open-source release will still be highly valuable to developers.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2058796067592736866
Musk previously admitted that the underlying model for Grok 4.2 struggles with advanced programming challenges due to flaws in training data quality, comprehensiveness, and recipe ratios. Still, he says the 500-billion-parameter base model excels at standard natural language processing and basic reasoning tasks.
Open-sourcing large models is a deliberate strategy for xAI. In March 2024, the company released Grok-1 with 314 billion parameters, making it the largest open-source model at the time.