Grok 5 Emerges As Musk’s AGI Target While AI Safety Warnings Intensify

Elon Musk said xAI expects Grok 5 to be the model that reaches artificial general intelligence, placing the AGI target beyond the company’s Grok 4.8 and Grok 4.9 releases.

Key Points:

Grok 4.8 is a 2.5-trillion-parameter model scheduled to finish training this week before reinforcement learning.

Musk said Grok 4.7 is roughly comparable with Anthropic’s Opus 5.0 but still needs stronger multimodal performance.

His Grok 5 claim did not include a benchmark or timetable for reaching AGI.

Musk Grok Roadmap

On Sep. 14, Musk wrote on X that Grok 4.8, a 2.5-trillion-parameter model built on xAI’s new C++ software stack, should finish training within the week before entering reinforcement learning. Asked how close that model would come to AGI, he replied, “That will be Grok 5.”

Musk also said Grok 4.7 is roughly comparable with Anthropic’s Opus 5.0, stronger in some areas and weaker in others, while acknowledging that xAI still needs to improve multimodal performance.

He expects Grok 4.8 to improve noticeably and Grok 4.9 to reach Astra or Fable-class performance, while describing Grok 5 as “maybe better than anything” before adding, “We shall see.” No benchmark accompanied the prediction.

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Amodei AGI Risks

AGI generally refers to systems that can match or exceed human performance across a broad range of intellectual tasks, rather than succeeding only in narrow areas. The stakes are broader because xAI has scaled quickly through large compute clusters and data tied to X and SpaceX, while frontier AI debates include control, misuse, jobs and concentrated corporate power.

That makes Musk’s claim difficult to measure today.

Musk made the comments the same day he backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for the industry to slow capability development because of safety concerns. Musk has also argued that advanced AI could sharply expand global economic output and accelerate progress in fields including science, robotics and software development. Grok 5 is now the model attached to that bet.

Alexey Bondarev

Alexey Bondarev is the Head of Content at Yellow.com, having reported on crypto for the last 10 years. He specializes in in-depth Research and Learn pieces, with a focus on analytical reporting, industry context, and the bigger forces shaping crypto, from the AI era and security technologies to fintech innovation. He believes that everything digital will imminently overcome everything analogue and is working hard to make that come true.