Yesterday, X (formerly Twitter) made waves with the announcement of Grok 3, their latest AI model. The presentation sparked a lot of discussion, raising questions about its capabilities and the competitive landscape of AI. Let’s break down what we know.
Grok 3 AI vs. ChatGPT: A Fair Comparison?
At the beginning of their broadcast, the X AI team put up the above chart tracking the reasoning progress of different models of Grok against different models of ChatGPT.
It is worth taking noting that since Elon Musk has been trying to purchase the OpenAI just like he did with Twitter and it’s obviously in his best interest to try and devalue that company as much as possible weather he wants to acquire the company or he just wants to compete with them as he is now so it’s best for him to try and convince people that his team has been able to produce a better model in the fraction of the time as OpenAI.Â
X’s Advantage: Colossus and Hardware Optimization
Regardless of the comparison charts, X’s investment in its AI infrastructure is undeniable. They’ve built Colossus, a massive data center housing what’s claimed to be the world’s largest GPU cluster, boasting 200,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. This scale is potentially twice as large as any other known cluster.
This gives X a significant advantage. Because they own and operate the entire tech stack, from the hardware up, they can optimize Grok’s performance at a granular level. OpenAI, primarily relying on Microsoft’s Azure platform, faces limitations in this regard. While they might have special agreements with Microsoft, they can’t achieve the same level of hardware-software integration as X. This “bare metal” control allows for deeper optimization, potentially leading to significant performance gains.
Tesla MegaPack
The sheer scale of Colossus is remarkable. Getting a cluster of this size operational is a major accomplishment. X reportedly brought the initial 100,000 GPUs online in just 122 days, adding another 100,000 in 92 days.
Powering this behemoth is a challenge. The data center consumes approximately 250 megawatts of power. X ingeniously leverages Tesla MegaPacks to manage power surges during startup and shutdown. They’ve also implemented a custom water cooling system to handle the immense heat generated by 200,000 GPUs. The complexity of cooling such a massive system is difficult to overstate.
Future of Grock 3 AI
X has hinted at plans to expand Colossus and potentially build additional data centers. With the current facility already consuming 0.25 GW of power, the potential for Grok 3 AI to reach the mythical 1.21 gigawatts (a “Back to the Future” reference) seems increasingly plausible.
Furthermore, X plans to upgrade from the H100 GPUs to the H200s. These newer GPUs offer almost double the onboard memory and improved performance, crucial for running large language models.
Grok 3’s Performance: Promising Benchmarks
Early benchmarks suggest Grok 3 AI excels in math, science, and coding compared to other models. An early version, codenamed “Chocolate,” reportedly outperformed other chatbots in blind tests on the IM Arena platform. IM Arena allows users to compare different AI chatbots, with users voting on the preferred results.
Grok 3 AI Pricing
Grok 3 is not open source. It’s a paywalled product, accessible only through X Premium+ subscriptions, which cost $40 per month. The introduction of Grok has even led to a price hike for X subscriptions.
Grok 2 And Hope For Open Source
While Grok 3 remains behind a paywall, there’s hope for the open-source community. Elon Musk has stated his intention to open-source Grok 2 once Grok 3 reaches stability. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt, as previous Grok models (1.5, 1.5v, and 2 mini) have not been open-sourced as promised.
The Bottom Line
Grok 3 AI represents a significant advancement in AI, backed by substantial infrastructure investment. While its paywalled nature and the potential bias in its comparisons raise questions, its performance and the scale of X’s data center are undeniably impressive. The future of Grok, and its impact on the AI landscape, remains a story to watch.
Image Credits – Grok’s Official X handleÂ
