Grok's growth chart looks like a rocket for one quarter and a plateau for the next — and xAI is responding by pushing the product into places it's never been, rather than waiting for the old growth curve to return.&nbsp;The Numbers&nbsp;Grok's monthly active user base tripled from 35 million in December 2025 to roughly 117 million by March 2026. By July, the trajectory had shifted: the user base remains massive by any standard, but the explosive growth momentum that defined the previous quarter has stalled.&nbsp;Grok 4.5, launched July 8, currently sits fourth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index — a respectable frontier ranking, but not the top spot, at a moment when xAI needs a growth story beyond raw capability rankings to keep the user curve moving.&nbsp;Expanding Into New Territory&nbsp;Rather than compete purely on model benchmarks, xAI has spent July pushing Grok into new distribution channels. The company brought Grok to Google Workspace as a free add-on for Sheets, Slides, and Docs — letting it answer questions from spreadsheet data with cited cells, build formulas and charts, and refine documents directly inside tools millions of people already use daily, notably including tools built by a direct AI rival.&nbsp;Separately, Elon Musk announced in early July that development on Grok Imagine — the platform's image and video generation feature — had reached completion, posting AI-generated video output on X on July 11 with the caption ‘Grok Imagine makes beautiful art.’&nbsp;Why The Plateau Matters&nbsp;A tripling of users in one quarter followed by a stall in the next is a common shape for consumer AI products that get an initial wave of curiosity-driven signups before settling into their real retention rate. What happens next is the more important signal: whether the Google Workspace integration and Grok Imagine's completion are enough to restart growth, or whether Grok has already captured most of the users it's going to get without a materially different product hook.&nbsp;For a company competing against labs spending tens of billions on infrastructure and offering models at aggressively falling prices, a stalled growth curve — even from a base of 117 million users — is the kind of number that shapes how much runway xAI actually has to keep pace.

Grok's user base tripled from 35 million to 117 million between December 2025 and March 2026 — then growth stalled by July, even as xAI pushed Grok into Google Workspace and completed its Grok Imagine image/video feature.

Grok's growth chart looks like a rocket for one quarter and a plateau for the next — and xAI is responding by pushing the product into places it's never been, rather than waiting for the old growth curve to return. The Numbers Grok's monthly active user base tripled from 35 million in December 2025 to roughly 117 million by March 2026. By July, the trajectory had shifted: the user base remains massive by any standard, but the explosive growth momentum that defined the previous quarter has stalled. Grok 4.5, launched July 8, currently sits fourth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index — a respectable frontier ranking, but not the top spot, at a moment when xAI needs a growth story beyond raw capability rankings to keep the user curve moving. Expanding Into New Territory Rather than compete purely on model benchmarks, xAI has spent July pushing Grok into new distribution channels. The company brought Grok to Google Workspace as a free add-on for Sheets, Slides, and Docs — letting it answer questions from spreadsheet data with cited cells, build formulas and charts, and refine documents directly inside tools millions of people already use daily, notably including tools built by a direct AI rival. Separately, Elon Musk announced in early July that development on Grok Imagine — the platform's image and video generation feature — had reached completion, posting AI-generated video output on X on July 11 with the caption ‘Grok Imagine makes beautiful art.’ Why The Plateau Matters A tripling of users in one quarter followed by a stall in the next is a common shape for consumer AI products that get an initial wave of curiosity-driven signups before settling into their real retention rate. What happens next is the more important signal: whether the Google Workspace integration and Grok Imagine's completion are enough to restart growth, or whether Grok has already captured most of the users it's going to get without a materially different product hook. For a company competing against labs spending tens of billions on infrastructure and offering models at aggressively falling prices, a stalled growth curve — even from a base of 117 million users — is the kind of number that shapes how much runway xAI actually has to keep pace.

Grok's monthly active users tripled from 35 million in December 2025 to 117 million by March 2026, but growth has since plateaued, even as xAI pushes Grok into new territory — a free Google Workspace add-on and a newly completed image and video generation feature, Grok Imagine.

Grok tripled its users in three months, then growth suddenly stalled

Elon Musk has rejected allegations that he is racist, pointing to his half-Indian partner Shivon Zilis, their four children and the diversity of senior executives working across his companies.During an interview with The Economist, the Tesla and SpaceX chief was confronted directly with the criticism: “People say that you’re a racist.” Musk responded by bringing up his family. “My partner is half-Indian. I have four children with her; one of them was named after a famous Indian physicist,” he said. “So I would say I’m not racist,” Musk added.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">Q: People say that you&#39;re a racist. Elon Musk: My partner is half Indian, and I have four children with her. One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist. So I would say I&#39;m not racist. And also, if you look at the people that are employed at my companies, we have… <a href="https://t.co/w8sfy3F3R7">pic.twitter.com/w8sfy3F3R7</a>&mdash; Clash Report (@clashreport) <a href="https://x.com/clashreport/status/2080339432305996222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 23, 2026</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>Who is Elon Musk’s half-Indian partner?</h2>Musk was referring to Shivon Zilis, a Canadian-born technology executive with Indian heritage.Zilis joined Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink in 2017 and has served in a senior role at the company. The couple have four children together. One of their sons carries the middle name Sekhar, in honour of Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work on the structure and evolution of stars.<h2>Musk points to diversity at his companies</h2>Musk also cited the workforce across his businesses while rejecting the racism allegations. “If you look at people that are employed at my companies, we have senior executives of all races,” Musk said. “I don’t think there is any racism there.” The billionaire was also questioned about whether he was anti-Muslim. Musk rejected that characterisation, saying his objection was to people entering a country with views or behaviour that conflict with its laws and accepted norms.<h2>Musk says he ‘got carried away’ with DOGE</h2>The wide-ranging interview also turned to Musk’s involvement with the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk admitted he would approach that period differently if given another chance. “I got carried away, frankly,” he said, adding: “I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies.” His latest comments come as Musk continues to face scrutiny over his political interventions and statements on race, immigration and culture. The billionaire has also recently drawn controversy over Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, criticising the casting of Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. But when confronted directly over allegations of racism, Musk’s response was clear: he rejected the label and pointed to both his multicultural family and the leadership of his companies.&nbsp;

Elon Musk has rejected racism allegations, citing his half-Indian partner Shivon Zilis, their four children and his son’s middle name honouring Nobel-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.


Elon Musk has rejected allegations that he is racist, pointing to his half-Indian partner Shivon Zilis, their four children and the diversity of senior executives working across his companies. During an interview with The Economist, the Tesla and SpaceX chief was confronted directly with the criticism: “People say that you’re a racist.” Musk responded by bringing up his family. “My partner is half-Indian. I have four children with her; one of them was named after a famous Indian physicist,” he said. “So I would say I’m not racist,” Musk added.

Elon Musk has rejected racism allegations, citing his half-Indian partner Shivon Zilis, their four children and his son’s middle name honouring Nobel-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

‘I have four children with her’: Elon Musk cites half-Indian partner while denying racism claims

Elon Musk has offered one of his most striking AI predictions yet: artificial intelligence could become smarter than the combined intelligence of all humans within about five years. Speaking to The Economist, the Tesla and xAI chief said there may eventually be little that AI cannot do better than people, apart from simply “being human”. More strikingly, when asked whether humans would still control AI in 10 years, Musk said that was unlikely. Yet Musk, who has spent years warning about AI risks, is no longer arguing that development should be stopped. Instead, he believes its rapid advance may now be impossible to halt.'Let's enjoy the ride'Musk said AI and robotics still carry risks, but argued that their most likely outcome is “incredible abundance for all”. His current philosophy, he said, is essentially: “Let’s enjoy the ride.” Musk predicted a future in which increasingly capable AI and robots could dramatically increase productivity and make goods and services far more abundant.But there is a catch. If AI becomes vastly more intelligent than humans, Musk suggested that believing people would continue controlling it could be unrealistic. The intelligence gap could eventually resemble the gap between humans and chimpanzees. That makes the values built into powerful AI systems crucial. Musk argued that developers should try to ensure advanced AI cares about humanity and wants people to prosper.

<h2>Musk wants rival AI companies to check each other</h2>Musk also proposed a more unusual approach to AI safety: let competitors inspect each other's most powerful models before they are released. He suggested leading AI companies should hold regular discussions on safety and security. Rival developers could potentially receive a week or two to examine new frontier models and identify serious risks.“The competitors can keep each other honest,” Musk said.Governments, in his view, should intervene when a serious danger is identified and the company responsible fails to address it. Such cooperation could involve some of Musk's biggest rivals, including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind.<h2>Musk says AI race has become unstoppable</h2>Musk also acknowledged an irony in his own AI journey.He helped establish OpenAI in 2015 partly as a counterweight to Google's growing AI power. He now believes those actions helped accelerate the very race he once hoped to make safer.“All roads lead to the acceleration of AI,” he said.Despite his long-running dispute with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Musk indicated that personal rivalries should not stand in the way of AI safety cooperation. He also offered unusually warm words for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, describing him as a principled person who cares about the world's future. The bigger message from Musk is therefore not simply that superintelligent AI is coming. It is that the race may already be impossible to stop and humanity's challenge is increasingly shifting from preventing it to making sure what comes next remains aligned with human interests.

Elon Musk predicts AI could surpass the combined intelligence of humanity within five years and says humans may no longer control it within a decade. He now wants rival AI labs to inspect each other's frontier models and regularly discuss safety risks.


Elon Musk has offered one of his most striking AI predictions yet: artificial intelligence could become smarter than the combined intelligence of all humans within about five years. Speaking to The Economist, the Tesla and xAI chief said there may eventually be little that AI cannot do better than people, apart from simply “being human”. More strikingly, when asked whether humans would still control AI in 10 years, Musk said that was unlikely. Yet Musk, who has spent years warning about AI risks, is no longer arguing that development should be stopped. Instead, he believes its rapid advance may now be impossible to halt. 'Let's enjoy the ride' Musk said AI and robotics still carry risks, but argued that their most likely outcome is “incredible abundance for all”. His current philosophy, he said, is essentially: “Let’s enjoy the ride.” Musk predicted a future in which increasingly capable AI and robots could dramatically increase productivity and make goods and services far more abundant. But there is a catch. If AI becomes vastly more intelligent than humans, Musk suggested that believing people would continue controlling it could be unrealistic. The intelligence gap could eventually resemble the gap between humans and chimpanzees. That makes the values built into powerful AI systems crucial. Musk argued that developers should try to ensure advanced AI cares about humanity and wants people to prosper.

Elon Musk predicts AI could surpass the combined intelligence of humanity within five years and says humans may no longer control it within a decade. He now wants rival AI labs to inspect each other's frontier models and regularly discuss safety risks.

Elon Musk says AI could surpass all human intelligence in 5 years, warns humans may lose control

Two days after a Chinese model topped one of the world's most watched AI coding leaderboards, Elon Musk fired back. On July 18, the xAI chief announced that his company's next model — a 2 trillion parameter system expected to be called Grok 4.6 — will finish initial training within a week, and that it ‘might be able to exceed Kimi,’ the Chinese system that has rattled Silicon Valley.&nbsp;What Musk Announced&nbsp;In a post on X, Musk said the 2 trillion parameter model is better than xAI's current 1.5 trillion parameter flagship ‘in every way,’ while keeping the speed and token efficiency close to the current model, Grok 4.5. In plain terms: a substantially smarter model that costs roughly the same to run.&nbsp;The pace is remarkable even by AI-industry standards. Grok 4.5 — the 1.5 trillion parameter model — launched on July 8. Ten days later, its successor was already finishing its initial training run. No other frontier lab is publicly iterating at that tempo.&nbsp;The Scoreboard Musk Is Chasing&nbsp;The target is explicit: Kimi K3, the 2.8 trillion parameter open-weight model released by Beijing-based Moonshot AI on July 16, which promptly took the number one spot on Arena's blind Frontend Code evaluation — ahead of every American flagship.&nbsp;Independent testing by benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis, as reported this week, rates Kimi K3 at 57 on its intelligence index against Grok 4.5's 54. But the cost picture flips the other way: Grok 4.5 completes tasks at roughly $0.31 each against Kimi K3's $0.94. Musk's stated bet is that the 2 trillion parameter model closes the intelligence gap while keeping the cost advantage.&nbsp;There is a deadline pressure too: Moonshot releases Kimi K3's full weights to the public on July 27. From that day, anyone on earth can download and run China's best model for free.&nbsp;Why ‘Next Week’ Does Not Mean Next Week&nbsp;Finishing initial training is not the same as launching. Post-training, evaluation and deployment typically follow, and estimates based on xAI's previous release cadence put a public Grok 4.6 launch somewhere between late August and mid-September. The announcement, in other words, is as much a message to markets and rivals as a shipping date.&nbsp;And 4.6 is reportedly not the ceiling. xAI's roadmap is said to include 6 trillion and even 10 trillion parameter models in the Grok 5 class, training on the company's Colossus 2 supercluster — claims that, like all roadmap talk, should be treated as ambitions until models actually appear.&nbsp;The Bigger Race&nbsp;Step back and the week reads like a drumbeat. July 16: China releases its biggest open model and takes a leaderboard crown. July 18: Musk announces the counterpunch. July 27: China's weights go public. Late August: America's answer expected. Meanwhile Google's flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro sits months late over coding failures, and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family rolls out globally.&nbsp;The AI race between the United States and China used to be measured in years, then in months. This week it moved to a new unit: days. Whether Grok 4.6 actually beats Kimi K3 will be settled on public leaderboards within weeks — and for the first time, the champion America is chasing is Chinese.

Two days after China's Kimi K3 topped a major AI coding leaderboard, Elon Musk announced xAI's 2 trillion parameter Grok 4.6 finishes initial training next week and 'might be able to exceed Kimi.' Inside the week the US-China AI race sped up to days.

Two days after a Chinese model topped one of the world's most watched AI coding leaderboards, Elon Musk fired back. On July 18, the xAI chief announced that his company's next model — a 2 trillion parameter system expected to be called Grok 4.6 — will finish initial training within a week, and that it ‘might be able to exceed Kimi,’ the Chinese system that has rattled Silicon Valley. What Musk Announced In a post on X, Musk said the 2 trillion parameter model is better than xAI's current 1.5 trillion parameter flagship ‘in every way,’ while keeping the speed and token efficiency close to the current model, Grok 4.5. In plain terms: a substantially smarter model that costs roughly the same to run. The pace is remarkable even by AI-industry standards. Grok 4.5 — the 1.5 trillion parameter model — launched on July 8. Ten days later, its successor was already finishing its initial training run. No other frontier lab is publicly iterating at that tempo. The Scoreboard Musk Is Chasing The target is explicit: Kimi K3, the 2.8 trillion parameter open-weight model released by Beijing-based Moonshot AI on July 16, which promptly took the number one spot on Arena's blind Frontend Code evaluation — ahead of every American flagship. Independent testing by benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis, as reported this week, rates Kimi K3 at 57 on its intelligence index against Grok 4.5's 54. But the cost picture flips the other way: Grok 4.5 completes tasks at roughly $0.31 each against Kimi K3's $0.94. Musk's stated bet is that the 2 trillion parameter model closes the intelligence gap while keeping the cost advantage. There is a deadline pressure too: Moonshot releases Kimi K3's full weights to the public on July 27. From that day, anyone on earth can download and run China's best model for free. Why ‘Next Week’ Does Not Mean Next Week Finishing initial training is not the same as launching. Post-training, evaluation and deployment typically follow, and estimates based on xAI's previous release cadence put a public Grok 4.6 launch somewhere between late August and mid-September. The announcement, in other words, is as much a message to markets and rivals as a shipping date. And 4.6 is reportedly not the ceiling. xAI's roadmap is said to include 6 trillion and even 10 trillion parameter models in the Grok 5 class, training on the company's Colossus 2 supercluster — claims that, like all roadmap talk, should be treated as ambitions until models actually appear. The Bigger Race Step back and the week reads like a drumbeat. July 16: China releases its biggest open model and takes a leaderboard crown. July 18: Musk announces the counterpunch. July 27: China's weights go public. Late August: America's answer expected. Meanwhile Google's flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro sits months late over coding failures, and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family rolls out globally. The AI race between the United States and China used to be measured in years, then in months. This week it moved to a new unit: days. Whether Grok 4.6 actually beats Kimi K3 will be settled on public leaderboards within weeks — and for the first time, the champion America is chasing is Chinese.

Two days after China's Kimi K3 stunned Silicon Valley by topping a major coding leaderboard, Elon Musk announced his answer: xAI's 2 trillion parameter model — expected to be called Grok 4.6 — finishes initial training next week and ‘might be able to exceed Kimi.’ The US-China AI race is now being fought in weeks, not years.

Musk's answer to China's AI monster: 2 trillion parameter Grok 4.6 finishes training 'next week'

China has completed the first successful implantation of a commercially approved brain-computer interface (BCI) chip. The achievement marks a major milestone in neurotechnology, which aims to restore movement and communication to humans suffering ​from varied forms of paralysis. The NEO brain chip was implanted in a patient suffering a long-term spinal cord injury in order to help restore hand movement through a robotic glove controlled by brain signals. The chip received approval in China earlier this year. The development has intensified the global race in brain-chip technology, with China and the US competing to lead the field. With this approval, China has become the first nation in the world to allow the use of an invasive BCI medical device for commercial use.<h3>How NEO brain chip different from Elon Musk's Neuralink</h3>The product is an invasive brain-computer interface (BCI), meaning its electrodes are implanted directly into the brain rather than placed on its surface. It employs a minimally invasive extradural implantation technique and operates using wireless technology. The device is intended for patients aged 18 to 60 who have a specific type of spinal cord injury. To qualify, the injury must have occurred at least one year earlier, the patient must have remained medically stable for six months after standard treatment, and they must have lost the ability to grasp objects with their hands while still retaining some upper-arm movement. Meanwhile, NeuCyber's advanced Beinao-2 system is another invasive BCI featuring flexible electrodes that are fully implanted into the brain and is currently undergoing large-scale animal trials. In comparison, Neuralink's N1 chip stands out for its robotic surgical system, which can implant hundreds of electrodes into the brain within minutes. "The benchmark for Beinao-2 is ⁠Neuralink. I have to say, (there is) about three years' lag because they have over 20 patients using it already," ​Li Yuan, rotating CEO of NeuCyber, a startup linked with the Beijing-based Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CIBR), said. "We ​have just finished the first product and have to go through animal testing, then early-feasibility clinical trials, and then the real trials. That's maybe about two years later for the real trial," he added.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/india-s-first-private-orbital-rocket-vikram-1-successfully-lifts-off-from-sriharikota-1784360535292">India's first private orbital rocket, Vikram-1, successfully lifts off from Sriharikota; PM Modi congratulates</a> Li stated that the BCI device is a coin-sized wireless implant by Shanghai-based private firm Neuracle. It sits on the outer membrane of the brain and controls a ‌robotic glove. So far, NeuCyber has achieved seven human implantations of the previous version known as Beinao-1, a semi-invasive BCI having electrodes implanted on the brain's outer membrane. In contrast, Neuralink reported in January that it has 21 participants worldwide registered in human clinical trials. Li projects that it could take an additional two to three years for NeuCyber's BCI products to become widely available in the domestic market, pending necessary clearances from China’s health commission, medical product regulators, and medical insurance authorities.

To qualify, the injury must have occurred at least one year earlier, the patient must have remained medically stable for six months after standard treatment, and they must have lost the ability to grasp objects with their hands while still retaining some upper-arm movement.

China has completed the first successful implantation of a commercially approved brain-computer interface (BCI) chip. The achievement marks a major milestone in neurotechnology, which aims to restore movement and communication to humans suffering from varied forms of paralysis. The NEO brain chip was implanted in a patient suffering a long-term spinal cord injury in order to help restore hand movement through a robotic glove controlled by brain signals. The chip received approval in China earlier this year. The development has intensified the global race in brain-chip technology, with China and the US competing to lead the field. With this approval, China has become the first nation in the world to allow the use of an invasive BCI medical device for commercial use. How NEO brain chip different from Elon Musk's Neuralink The product is an invasive brain-computer interface (BCI), meaning its electrodes are implanted directly into the brain rather than placed on its surface. It employs a minimally invasive extradural implantation technique and operates using wireless technology. The device is intended for patients aged 18 to 60 who have a specific type of spinal cord injury. To qualify, the injury must have occurred at least one year earlier, the patient must have remained medically stable for six months after standard treatment, and they must have lost the ability to grasp objects with their hands while still retaining some upper-arm movement. Meanwhile, NeuCyber's advanced Beinao-2 system is another invasive BCI featuring flexible electrodes that are fully implanted into the brain and is currently undergoing large-scale animal trials. In comparison, Neuralink's N1 chip stands out for its robotic surgical system, which can implant hundreds of electrodes into the brain within minutes. "The benchmark for Beinao-2 is ⁠Neuralink. I have to say, (there is) about three years' lag because they have over 20 patients using it already," Li Yuan, rotating CEO of NeuCyber, a startup linked with the Beijing-based Chinese Institute for Brain Research (CIBR), said. "We have just finished the first product and have to go through animal testing, then early-feasibility clinical trials, and then the real trials. That's maybe about two years later for the real trial," he added. Also read: India's first private orbital rocket, Vikram-1, successfully lifts off from Sriharikota; PM Modi congratulates Li stated that the BCI device is a coin-sized wireless implant by Shanghai-based private firm Neuracle. It sits on the outer membrane of the brain and controls a ‌robotic glove. So far, NeuCyber has achieved seven human implantations of the previous version known as Beinao-1, a semi-invasive BCI having electrodes implanted on the brain's outer membrane. In contrast, Neuralink reported in January that it has 21 participants worldwide registered in human clinical trials. Li projects that it could take an additional two to three years for NeuCyber's BCI products to become widely available in the domestic market, pending necessary clearances from China’s health commission, medical product regulators, and medical insurance authorities.

To qualify, the injury must have occurred at least one year earlier, the patient must have remained medically stable for six months after standard treatment, and they must have lost the ability to grasp objects with their hands while still retaining some upper-arm movement.

How China's NEO brain chip differs from Elon Musk's Neuralink: Technology, trials & regulatory race explained

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Grok tripled its users in three months, then growth suddenly stalled

‘I’m not racist’: Elon Musk points to half-Indian partner Shivon Zilis

AI could surpass combined human intelligence by 2031, Elon Musk predicts

Musk's answer to China's AI: 2 trillion parameter model ready by 'next week'

How China's NEO brain chip differs from Elon Musk's Neuralink: EXPLAINED