Elon Musk Goes Big: Grok 4 Is Free Worldwide Just Days After GPT‑5 Launch

Amidst the wave of innovation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the launch of GPT-5 has triggered a wave of widespread reactions in the technology community. And just a few days after the announcement of GPT-5, billionaire Elon Musk once again caused a stir when he announced that Grok 4, xAI's latest AI product, was open to all users for free.

This move is not only a direct declaration of war against competitors but also a signal affirming Elon Musk's ambition and open-minded dedication to the equal dissemination of AI technology globally. This marks an important turning point in the development of technology, when a powerful language metaprogram like Grok 4 is no longer the privilege of high-end users but will soon reach everyone from teachers, students, businessmen, to ordinary users.

1. The newly released Grok 4 advanced AI experience has been expanded for free

Grok 4 is officially the latest AI product from Elon Musk’s xAI to be announced as free to all users. Notably, this announcement comes just a month after Grok 4 was first rolled out to SuperGrok and Premium+ users. Therefore, the rapid free launch immediately after shows that xAI wants to quickly turn Grok 4 into an open playground, promote rapid user growth, and at the same time make it free without sacrificing quality and scope of application.

Grok 4 is now easily accessible via its official web platform at grok.com as well as its mobile app. This shows that xAI has invested heavily in both the platform and app experience, ensuring wide accessibility across all devices. With this launch, Grok 4 features significant improvements in speed, performance, and accuracy. The increased use of reinforcement learning combined with the integration of a web search engine allows the system to respond with the latest, more accurate information and respond faster. Users can manually select Grok 4 from the model menu when they want to experience it, allowing them to be more proactive in optimizing the interaction process.

Unlike previous AI products that usually launched the basic version to the public after a long period of testing with the “premium” version, Grok 4 seems to go against tradition. Instead of prioritizing the group of paying users, xAI decided to open it widely right at the golden time when interest in GPT-5 was rising in the community. This was a deliberate move that was both strategic and strongly marked by the leader Elon Musk.

2. The overwhelming power of Grok 4

Grok 4 is not just a product launched to compete in terms of media, it is truly powerful in terms of performance. Centralizing the system on the Colossus mega-scale computing cluster, with more than 200,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), xAI has provided a powerful hardware platform for Grok 4 to deploy advanced learning algorithms at large scale.

Grok 4 performed exceptionally well in tests that measured logic and automated decision-making. On the ARC-AGI V2 test, a benchmark in the field of logic and cognitive AI, Grok 4 achieved an accuracy of 15.9%, double that of Claude Opus (8.5%). This is not just a number, but a testament to the leap in quality in handling logic problems, reasoning, and multidimensional thinking.

Not stopping there, in the Vending-Bench simulation, Grok 4 showed its overall superiority. It “earned” $4,694 in revenue and sold 4,569 units, while Claude Opus 4 only earned $2,077 with 1,412 units sold. The average of other test participants was only $844 and sold 344 units. These numbers clearly reflect Grok 4’s ability to collect, analyze user data and come up with optimal sales strategies.

In addition, xAI said it has developed a specialized version called Grok 4 Heavy, which is more optimized for multi-agent interaction. Grok 4 Heavy is currently only supported by registration, which means it is not free, but it is truly a breakthrough. In the USAMO'25 exam (an extremely rigorous math exam), Grok 4 Heavy scored 61.9%, leading the entire competition. This is an unprecedented achievement for an AI model. Also in another special test called "Humanity's Last Exam", Grok 4 Heavy was the first model to surpass the 50.7% threshold, demonstrating language processing, analysis and perception capabilities that far exceed the "human understanding" level.

According to xAI, these achievements are the result of applying amplified reinforcement learning, combined with a separate xAI engine system, creating an AI platform that is both deep and flexible, powerful enough to handle complex logic and simulate high-level decision-making situations.

3. Expansion strategy

Elon Musk is famous for his philosophy of “fast, open, global” and Grok 4 is a living proof of that. The free launch just one month after the transition from SuperGrok/Premium+ to general public shows that xAI is looking to take advantage of the opportunity when users, including a large number of non-professionals, are in strong need of access to AI, and at the same time, make Grok 4 more popular than ever.

This strategy has several key points:

Creating a viral phenomenon : Free access creates a widespread wave of experiences, causing users to share, review, and spread word of mouth. This helps Grok 4 spread faster than any traditional advertising campaign.
Increased training data : As more people use Grok 4, xAI will collect more feedback data, helping to perfect the system and fix bugs, refine responsiveness, and improve overall quality.
Encourage user tiering : While Grok 4 is free to use, the Heavy version remains subscription-based. This tiering encourages premium or complex users to move to paid, which optimizes revenue in the long run.
Implementing the goal of open technology : Elon Musk has always emphasized the importance of technology being accessible to everyone, not just the rich or large organizations. The free Grok 4 clearly demonstrates that commitment.

4. Comparing Grok 4 with GPT-5

The successive releases of GPT-5 and xAI's response to Grok 4 are an inevitable comparison. If GPT-5 continues to improve its language, information processing, and integration of new worlds of knowledge, Grok 4 has proven itself to be no less, even overwhelming in many aspects.

First of all, Grok 4's logic and decision-making performance, especially on tests like ARC-AGI V2 and Vending-Bench, outperforms any major language model ever published. While GPT-5 focuses on language fluency and content creation, Grok 4 shows a breakthrough advantage in logical thinking. Combined with the integration of a web search engine, Grok 4 not only "understands" but also "informs" real-time feedback, making the results more accurate and useful.

The freemium approach highlights a strategic difference. While other platforms like OpenAI have adopted a pay-as-you-go approach for new releases (like GPT-4 before it and possibly GPT-5), xAI has chosen a public, mass-access path from the start, which could tip the competitive balance, making it easier for average users to switch to Grok 4 instead of waiting or paying for GPT-5.

5. User Experience

Another notable strength is the user experience on Grok 4. Deployed on both the web platform at grok.com and the mobile application, xAI has been optimized to be compatible with all users. The interface on both platforms is designed to be clean, easy to navigate and intuitive, making it easy for users, even those with little experience working with AI, to select models, submit questions and receive results.

The speed improvements in Grok 4 are reflected in significantly faster response times compared to previous versions, allowing users to interact without interruption. The ability to automatically access the latest data via a web search engine that supports up-to-date and accurate information from breaking news to recent experimental data makes Grok 4's responses not only more powerful in processing, but also more useful and relevant.

Reinforcement learning technology is applied to help the system refine its language understanding, learn from user feedback and improve over time. The ability for users to manually choose between versions (e.g. Grok 4 regular or Grok 4 Heavy if subscribed) also allows for more flexibility in the experience, depending on personal purposes from learning, research to intensive work.

6. Potential impact on users and the design and content creation community

As a long-time content writer in the design field, I see Grok 4 as an extremely powerful support tool in content creation, idea development, and research.

First of all, with its deep language understanding and high logic response, Grok 4 can help create outlines, brainstorm ideas, draft, and perform complex analyses from the latest information, all with just a few simple questions. Grok 4 accesses the web to update information, keeping creative content fresh and accurate.

In the design community, Grok 4 can help suggest design trends, analyze styles, create detailed descriptions for visual designs, or make suggestions for color schemes, typography, and creative product structures. Goals that once required a lot of time to research and synthesize can now be significantly shortened, bringing outstanding work efficiency.

For content creators in general, from bloggers, copywriters to journalists or lecturers, Grok 4 is an assistant that can handle logic, comparative analysis, drafts, create strong arguments, and even provide structure and style feedback. Multi-agent interaction (in Grok 4 Heavy) also opens up the prospect of virtual teamwork with multiple AI “characters” representing different roles, for example: a writer, an editor, a sourcer, creating a highly automated creative process.

7. Remaining challenges and questions

Of course, not everything is perfect. Making Grok 4 free while Grok 4 Heavy remains a subscription raises some questions about the balance between openness and control. The level of precision, AI ethics, dependency, and quality assurance when mass users participate need to be considered.

One major concern is the potential for over-reliance on AI for content development. If users are not able to maintain their ability to think independently, there is a risk of content that lacks real creativity or personal depth. The fact that Grok 4 Heavy can handle high-level reasoning tasks could also create a gap between regular and paid users if left unchecked.

Ethics and security issues also need to be addressed. As AI can access the web and gather data, xAI needs to have mechanisms in place to ensure that sensitive, misleading, or copyrighted information is not exploited to generate responses. Open interactions between AI and the web increase the risk of spreading misinformation, requiring monitoring and user protection.

Finally, the fact that Grok 4 Heavy is subscription-only raises concerns about fragmentation. Users who can’t afford it won’t have access to the best version, creating an “AI-gated class” of users with different levels of tool quality. This raises the question: does making Grok 4 generally free do enough to compensate for non-paying members, or does it actually create inequality in access to the technology?

8. The Future of Grok 4 and the Prospect of Pervasive AI

Despite the challenges, Grok 4 and especially the Heavy version mark a major step forward in the global AI map. Being open to the public not only gives it a competitive advantage over GPT-5, but also sends a strong message: powerful AI technology must be open to the community.

If Grok 4 truly succeeds in communityization with exponentially growing users, rich data, the system can learn, self-improve, and deploy more specialized models. Grok 4 Heavy is still the “trump card” for advanced users, but with such a powerful free platform, the entire xAI ecosystem can grow rapidly.

In the long term, we can envision a future where powerful AI is integrated into education (supporting logical learning, critical thinking), business (analysis, strategy suggestions), research (synthesizing new information, in-depth analysis), and content creation (supporting ideas, developing structures, generating high-quality text). Grok 4 is paving the way for that era.

9. Conclusion

With Grok 4, Elon Musk and xAI are not just introducing a new AI tool, they are initiating a strong open strategy both in technology and in thinking. Making Grok 4 free for everyone just a month after the premium version, a few days after the launch of GPT-5, is a clever strategic move, but also a humane one that affirms the belief that powerful AI should be accessible to everyone.

Grok 4’s performance in logic and business tests combined with the Heavy multi-agent interaction capabilities shows that xAI has been working hard to create “deep understanding, fast response, strong logic” AI. Quality user experiences on web and mobile ensure that everyone has access.

Of course, rapid adoption comes with great responsibility. Content quality, AI ethics, and hierarchical barriers still need to be closely monitored. However, if xAI does well, Grok 4 could become the fulcrum of a rich, open AI ecosystem where creativity, logic, and interaction converge for the benefit of the community.