Musk's xAI Open-Sources 314B-Parameter AI Model Grok-1 to Challenge OpenAI

Elon Musk's AI company xAI released the 314B parameter Grok-1 model weights and code under an Apache 2 license to compete with OpenAI's closed models.

The release comes amid Musk's criticism of OpenAI for not openly releasing its models and his lawsuit against the company.

The base Grok-1 model is not fine-tuned for applications like dialogue, so more work is needed to make it conversational.

With 296GB weights, Grok-1 requires datacenter-level hardware to run, though quantized versions may emerge for consumer GPUs.

This is one of the largest open weights AI models released so far, licensed permissively under Apache 2 rather than more restrictive licenses.