On Sunday (28th) local time, Musk posted on his social media platform X that his latest generation large language model Grok 4.5 has officially started beta testing internally at SpaceX and Tesla, before a wider rollout.
image Notably, according to Musk, early evaluation results show the model's performance is close to, or may even surpass, Anthropic's flagship model Claude Opus. Currently, reinforcement learning (RL) continues to significantly optimize the model, and its companion "Grok Build" test benchmark is also improving.
The billionaire entrepreneur also said SpaceX plans to release a "completely from-scratch trained" new AI model every month for the rest of the year. This remark suggests future versions may not be simple improvements on existing systems but entirely new foundation models built through new training.
This update highlights the accelerating pace at which leading AI companies are competing to improve model performance and expand capabilities. And Musk's promise to release a new AI model every month this year indicates that xAI is pursuing an aggressive R&D cycle, which could intensify competition with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Emphasis on Software Development
According to Musk, Grok 4.5 is based on the 1.5 trillion parameter V9 base model, with supplementary training that specifically includes data from the popular AI coding tool Cursor.
Beta testing is a limited trial, providing the new software product to a group of users before official release, allowing developers to find bugs, gather feedback, and make improvements.
While Musk did not provide detailed technical information about Grok 4.5's features, the inclusion of Cursor training data indicates Grok will continue to emphasize software development and coding assistance, one of the most important commercial applications of large language models.
On the 16th of this month, SpaceX announced it would acquire AI coding company Anysphere for $60 billion. Anysphere is the developer of the popular AI coding assistant Cursor, a move aimed at accelerating its presence in the enterprise AI market.
SpaceX said at the time it expects the acquisition to close in the third quarter of 2026. The company had been tracking Cursor for months. In March, two product engineering leads from Cursor joined SpaceX to work on its lunar projects and xAI's R&D efforts.
This announcement comes as xAI continues to expand its AI infrastructure and position Grok as a strong contender in the rapidly growing generative AI market. Testing the model internally at SpaceX and Tesla is expected to provide experience with large-scale engineering, manufacturing, and software development workflows before wider deployment.
