xAI (SpaceXAI)

Last updated: 2026-08-22

Status

xAI is now a SpaceX subsidiary. SpaceX announced the acquisition on 2 February 2026; the SpaceX S-1 later names the effective date of the xAI Merger as 2 February 2026 and the earlier xAI–X merger as 28 March 2025. Public product branding on x.ai is SpaceXAI. The current shipping flagship text model is Grok 4.6 (API slug grok-4.6), released 12 August 2026.

Engineering snapshot (primary sources): - Grok 4.6: 500,000-token context; text + image in, text out; reasoning effort low / medium / high (default) / xhigh; knowledge cutoff 1 February 2026. API pricing $2 / $0.50 / $6 per 1M tokens (input / cached input / output) below 200k prompt tokens; $4 / $1 / $12 above. Rate limits: 150 rps, 50M tokens/min. Regions: us-east-1, us-west-2. Fast variant is twice the price (company announcement). - Grok 4.5 (16 July 2026): trained on “tens of thousands of NVIDIA GB300 GPUs”; coded/agentic/knowledge-work focus; trained alongside Cursor; company-claimed ~80 TPS and ~2× token efficiency vs leading rivals on SWE-bench Pro-style work. - Grok Bot (11 August 2026, early beta): persistent cloud-VM agents (browser, filesystem, terminal, computer-use). Initially SuperGrok Plus/Heavy and selected Cursor plans; 21 August 2026 post expanded inclusion to SuperGrok Plus, Cursor Pro+, and all Cursor Teams plans. - Grok Build: coding agent (CLI/TUI, later web/mobile); grok-build-0.1 on API (May 2026, early access). Grok Build harness open-sourced 15 July 2026. - Imagine: Video 1.5 GA 16 June 2026 (grok-imagine-video-1.5); 1080p T2V/I2V later in July. Image 2.0 announced 7 August 2026. API list prices (docs): imagine-image $0.02, image-2.0 $0.04, image-quality $0.05; video $0.050/sec, video-1.5 $0.080/sec. - Voice: Speech-to-speech grok-voice-think-fast-2.0 (July 2026); grok-voice-latest routed to it from 5 August 2026. Custom voices (April 2026). - Grok on X: 4.5 rolled to grok.com, X, iOS, Android on 22 July 2026. Server-side x_search / web_search / code_execution tools on the xAI API. - Robotics: xAI does not ship a robot. Tesla has described Grok as a language/voice layer for Optimus / “Digital Optimus” / Macrohard; that is a Tesla product path, not an xAI hardware program. SpaceX S-1 defines Macrohard as an agentic digital-workflow platform in development with Tesla.

Compute (mix of company + S-1 + independent estimates): - Company Colossus page still markets the original 200,000 H100 single-cluster build (122 days, then doubled in 92 days) and a “roadmap to 1M GPUs.” Treat that page as historical marketing, not a live GPU census. - 6 May 2026 Anthropic partnership post: Colossus 1 has over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs (H100, H200, GB200). - SpaceX S-1 (filed 1 June 2026): COLOSSUS = Paul R. Lowry Rd, Memphis; COLOSSUS II = Memphis + Southaven, MS, part of a “coherent gigawatt-scale AI training cluster”; company claims Colossus + Colossus II collectively provide ~1.0 GW of compute power. First Colossus cluster online in 122 days; first Colossus II cluster in 91 days. AI-segment capex $12.727B (FY2025) and $7.723B (Q1 2026). - Epoch AI tracker (updated 21 August 2026, estimate, not a company count): Colossus 2 ~110k B200 + 330k B300 ≈ 1,112k H100-eq, ~946 MW IT, ~$35.8B capex; Q1 2027 projection ~1.8M H100-eq / 1.53 GW. Independent model — mark as estimate.

Business: - Series E: $20B closed 6 January 2026 (upsized from $15B target). Named investors: Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone, Fidelity, QIA, MGX, Baron Capital; strategic NVIDIA and Cisco Investments. The post said Grok 5 “is currently in training” and Colossus I+II would end the year with over one million H100 GPU equivalents (forward-looking). - SpaceX S-1 AI segment (includes compute rental + Grok + X): FY2025 revenue $3.201B, loss from operations $(6.355)B, Segment Adj. EBITDA $(1.237)B. Q1 2026 revenue $818M, loss from operations $(2.469)B, Segment Adj. EBITDA $(609)M. - Cursor (Anysphere): SpaceX 8-K dated 14 August 2026 — merger effective that day; implied Cursor equity value $60.0B in SpaceX Class A stock (389,289,254 shares of common + additional RSUs/options). - Anthropic compute lease: company post 6 May 2026 (Colossus 1 access to expand Claude Pro/Max capacity; Anthropic also “expressed interest” in multi-GW orbital compute). Secondary S-1 coverage quotes ~$1.25B/month through May 2029, ~325k GPUs, 90-day termination after an initial period. Dollar terms not in the xAI news post; treat S-1 dollar figures as secondary until quoted from the filing MD&A. Google compute lease (~$920M/month) is secondary reporting, not in the xAI news post. - Combined X+Grok MAU (S-1): ~550M as of 31 March 2026 (520M at 31 Dec 2025); Grok-feature MAU 117M / 89M. Supported accounts ~1.3B TTM. Daily posts on X ~350 million (S-1). Paid subs ~6.3M (see X file).

Next milestone

Item	What is known	Confidence
Grok 5	Confirmed “currently in training” on 6 Jan 2026. S-1 says next-gen training is expected to scale “toward multiple trillions of parameters.” No official release date, model card, or parameter count. Q1/Q2 2026 windows cited in secondary coverage have passed.	High that it is in training; low on date/size
Grok 4.6 distribution	Bedrock GA 19 August 2026; news page also lists GitHub Copilot, Google Enterprise Agent Platform, Vertex.	High for Bedrock; Copilot/Vertex from x.ai/news headlines
Grok Bot GA / enterprise	Still early beta; enterprise waitlist. X Dev Platform (Chris Park, ~18 Aug) said discounted X API reads + free credits for Grok Bot are “launching soon” — no date.	Medium
Colossus 2 / 1M H100-eq	Company 2026 year-end target from Series E. Epoch projects further GB300 fill into Q1 2027.	Medium (target vs estimate)
Orbital AI compute	S-1: “as early as 2028.” Anthropic expressed interest. Engineering, not a 2026 product.	Stated intent
Macrohard / Tesla overlap	S-1: in development with Tesla. Not an xAI ship date.	Uncertain timing

Competition

xAI’s own 12 August 2026 Grok 4.6 post compares against GPT-5.6 Sol Max (OpenAI) and Fable 5 Max (Anthropic) on AA Intelligence Index, GDPVal-AA, CursorBench 3.2, DeepSWE 1.1, FrontierCode 1.1, APEX-Agents, Terminal-Bench v3.0. Company chart: Grok 4.6 61 vs Fable 5 Max 62 vs GPT-5.6 Sol Max 61 vs Grok 4.5 High 56 on AA Intelligence Index. These are xAI-published figures using third-party or self-reported competitor scores — not an independent bake-off.

Rival	2026 posture vs xAI
OpenAI	Still the consumer/API incumbent. xAI charts put GPT-5.6 Sol Max roughly tied on the composite index, ahead on some SWE/agent benches (DeepSWE, Terminal-Bench).
Anthropic	Coding/agent leader in xAI’s own DeepSWE/FrontierCode/APEX numbers (Fable 5 Max). Unusual customer of Colossus 1 — competitor and tenant.
Google DeepMind	Distribution via Vertex / Google Enterprise Agent Platform (xAI headlines). Gemini family not in the 4.6 score table.
Meta	Open-weights Llama line; not in xAI’s 4.6 published table. Compete on open models + infra, not on Grok consumer UX.

Positioning: xAI is competing on (1) GB300-scale training + cheap frontier API ($2/$6), (2) Cursor-native coding agents after the $60B close, (3) multimodal Imagine/Voice, (4) X real-time data, (5) selling spare Colossus capacity. Weakness the S-1 itself flags: AI segment is heavily loss-making and capex-intensive; Grok 5 has slipped relative to early-2026 chatter.

Key people

Person	Role	Notes
Elon Musk	Founder; SpaceX CEO/CTO/Chairman	Controls the parent after the Feb 2026 merger.
Michael Nicolls	President of xAI/SpaceXAI (reported Apr 2026)	Former Starlink exec. Title from Bloomberg / press, not an x.ai leadership page.
Bret Johnsen	SpaceX CFO	Signed the 14 Aug 2026 Cursor 8-K; S-1 finance.
Gwynne Shotwell	SpaceX President & COO	Press reports ops overlap with the AI division after the merger. Not independently confirmed on x.ai.
Cursor / Anysphere leadership	Now SpaceX employees	8-K names the target as Anysphere, Inc. Individual names not in the 8-K.

Several xAI research co-founders (Igor Babuschkin and others) are reported to have left in 2026. Personnel churn is secondary reporting.

Sources

Secondary / estimates (do not treat as company numbers) - Epoch AI Colossus 2 tracker (updated 21 Aug 2026): https://epoch.ai/data/ai-data-centers/directory/colossus-2 - Bloomberg (Nicolls; Colossus 1 lease rationale); TechCrunch 15 Aug 2026 (Cursor close) - Community Grok 5 6T/10T parameter claims — unconfirmed