Musk Open-Sources Grok 2.5, fighting OpenAI

Elon Musk just dropped one of the boldest moves in AI this year. His company xAI has fully open-sourced Grok 2.5, a massive language model that rivals GPT-4 in benchmarks. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, which keep their most advanced systems locked away, Musk released Grok under the Apache 2.0 license. That means anyone can download it, tweak it, and even use it for commercial projects with no strings attached.

In this episode, we break down what Grok 2.5 actually is, from its 314 billion parameter mixture-of-experts design to the smaller 25 billion parameter version for lighter deployments. We look at why Musk made this move now, how it ties into his ongoing feud with OpenAI, and what it means for developers who want strong models without corporate restrictions.

We’ll also unpack the strategic side: how open-sourcing Grok 2.5 helps xAI compete without Amazon- or Microsoft-level funding, how it leverages the X platform to grow faster, and why Musk thinks openness beats secrecy when it comes to AI. Whether you’re building apps, following AI politics, or just curious how Musk plans to fight Big Tech with code, this episode gives you the full story.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads, The
Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
I'm your host Will Walden, Elon Musk's AI company XAI has
released Grok 2.5 Urban Open Source License, raising one

(00:24):
question what exactly does Elon Musk gain from giving away his
code? This makes XAI the first major
U.S. company to open source, a flagship conversational model
while it's still considering competitive and it directly
challenges the closed source strategies of other companies

(00:45):
like Open AI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind.
Musk framed the decision as a philosophical one about
transparency, but the decision also positions XAI to expand its
influence without outspending its rivals and user acquisition
or cloud infrastructure. Now.
XAI published the weights and architecture for Grok 2.5 Friday

(01:08):
night, uploading them to a public GitHub repository under
the Apache 2 Point O license. A license allows anyone to use,
modify, or build on Grok 2.5, including for commercial
purposes, without paying XAI anything or attributing anything
to XAI. Now this immediately makes Grok

(01:29):
2.5 one of the most permissivelylicensed large language models
ever released at this scale. The model comes in two sizes, a
314 billion parameter version trained with mixture of experts
techniques and a smaller dense version with 25 billion
parameters. Both are trained on publicly

(01:50):
available and licensed data sources, according to X AI and
Elon Musk described the release as a commitment to openness and
said it aligns with XA is broader mission to develop AI
that benefits all of humanity. He previously criticized Sam
Altman and Open AI for switchingto a closed source model after
becoming a for profit company inMarch.

(02:12):
XAI open source Croc 1, though that model lagged way behind
current commercial systems, Croc2.5 narrows that gap
considerably. According to internal
evaluations, Croc 2.5 ranks close to GPT 4 on several
benchmarks, including MMLU, which is massive multitask
language understanding and HumanEvil, a programming test

(02:36):
commonly used to measure LLM coding capabilities.
So releasing Grok 2.5 under Apache 2 Point O immediately
places pressure on Sam Altman and Open AI in Anthropic, who
have argued that safety risks justify keeping their most
capable models closed. Musk has openly dismissed that
rationale, claiming that companies are using safety as an

(02:59):
excuse to maintain control over their code base and their user
base. Now by Elon open sourcing Grok
2.5 X AI makes it easier for startups, researchers and other
companies to train on a strong base model without building from
scratch. The trade off Less control for
broader adoption mirrors what Meta has done with Llama two and

(03:22):
three. Though Meta still uses a non
commercial license, the release also serves A practical purpose.
Grok runs inside X, where it appears the chatbot for premium
Subs. Making Grok 2.5 open source
gives Musk access to a global pool of developers who can test,
improve, and adapt the system without being on XA is payroll.

(03:46):
Now. That outsourcing effect has
already benefited Llama Meta's ecosystem, and Musk appears to
be betting that it can be done with Grok as well.
XAI has stated that future versions, including Grok 3, may
not be open source, suggesting that Grok 2.5 may serve as the
platform's long term public version while development

(04:07):
continues behind the scenes on other models.
Now, Musk has also said the Grok2.5 has been trained to be
maximally truthful, quality thatremains difficult to measure.
XAI claims that Grok now outperforms Claude 2.1, Gemini
1.5, and GPT 4 in some conversational tasks, though

(04:27):
external benchmarks vary on that.
Grok 2.5 is not connected to Real Time Search or X's live
data feed, though that's unlike the private chat bot used by X
users. That means developers using the
open source Grok will not have access to Musk's internal data
pipelines, which remain a competitive asset unique to the
version of Grok embedded within X.

(04:50):
And open sourcing Grok 2.5 also gives XAI a way to compete with
Big Tech without relying on partnerships.
Unlike Anthropic, which has tieditself closely to Amazon, or
Open AI, which remains linked toMicrosoft, XAI operates as an
independent entity that would benefits from its access to X's

(05:10):
user data in its upcoming integration with Tesla's
interface hardware. Now, the open source model
allows XAI to sidestep capital constraints by letting external
users do much of the refinement and experimentation that would
otherwise require dedicated in house teams.
I want to know if you're on yourpodcast platform right now.

(05:31):
If you have comments, leave a comment.
Would you use grok at home? Would you be able to mix it
yourself? Would you download it from
GitHub and be able to use it? Let me know.
Let me know what what comes of this.
So let's get back into Grok. Though the 2.5 version mixture

(05:52):
of Experts architecture divides the model into separate
subnetworks, only a portion of which activate at any given
time, this design improves efficiency and reduces training
costs, especially when deployed at scale.
It also means that developers who download Grok 2.5 will need
infrastructure capable of handling that complexity.

(06:14):
That may limit adoption among individual users or small teams,
but larger labs and cloud based EI platforms can run the model
with relative ease and for free.Releasing such a large scale
open source model at this time sends a huge signal to the
industry. XAI is betting on diffusion over

(06:35):
exclusivity. By removing licensing friction,
it creates a channel for grok based variance to proliferate
across research labs, startups and independent projects.
Musk appears to believe that wide availability will help
create loyalty and technical entrenchment, even if it's
limits of the company ability tomonetize Grok directly and make

(06:55):
money from every user. The decision also reinforces
Musk's public feud with Open AI and Sam Altman.
He Co founded the company in 2015, then left in 2018 after
internal disagreements. Since then, Musk has attacked
Open AI repeatedly, suing it earlier this year and accusing
CEO Sam Altman of betraying its founding principles.

(07:17):
XA is release of Croc 2.5 under a fully open license marks a
clear ideological split from thecommercial closed source path
that Open AI has taken since itspartnership with Microsoft, and
Croc 2.5 is now freely availableto download on GitHub.
You can go do it right now. They have install instructions
and model weights posted alongside this license.

(07:40):
Any developer can fine tune it for their own applications.
You can use it for whatever you want to use it for and they have
no say over what you do with it.Download the code, you can do
whatever you want to with it now.
You can integrate it into custompipelines or study its
architecture for academic purposes.
You can make a for profit company using Grok.

(08:04):
XAI has not imposed any restrictions on use beyond what
is standard under Apache 2 PointO, which includes liability
disclaimers. But there's no functional
limitations on you. You can just go wild and build
whatever you want to build. They're planning a flag right
now in a part of the EI space that remains divided between
access and control. The release turns Grok into a

(08:27):
public tool now that does something you get on X or in
your Tesla. It's not just a product anymore.
This is for everybody. And Musk claimed this earlier
this year that he was going to release Grok open source and
everybody would be able to use it.
Now, like we said before, the next version of Grok will be
closed source. They're planning on using Grok

(08:49):
2.5 for testing and so they can have something available for
people to use and when they upgrade from the next version of
Grok to two versions after or even a version after, we might
see that on GitHub as well. I'm an open source proponent.
I've used it for thousands of development jobs in the past and

(09:12):
still doing that now. So I think this is a great move
by X AI. Let me know what you think in
the comments and I'll see you inthe next one.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
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(09:34):
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