Elon Musk has updated his predictions for xAI’s Grok 5 model. He now says there’s a 10% chance the AI system will achieve artificial general intelligence. This represents a major shift from his earlier September comments when he first suggested Grok 5 “might have a shot” at AGI. In an October 18 post on X, Musk wrote: “My estimate of the probability of Grok 5 achieving AGI is now at 10% and rising.” He added that “Grok 5 will be AGI or something indistinguishable from AGI”.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) stands as AI research’s biggest prize. It refers to AI systems that can match human cognitive abilities across any intellectual task. Unlike today’s narrow AI tools that excel at specific functions like translation or image recognition, AGI would possess the flexibility and learning power that defines human intelligence.
Most experts predict AGI won’t arrive until 2040-2060, according to MIT’s 2025 analysis. However, early AGI-like systems could emerge between 2026-2028. Musk’s prediction for Grok 5 expected before 2025 ends puts xAI years ahead of these forecasts.
Grok 4’s record-breaking performance
Musk’s confidence stems from Grok 4’s breakthrough results since launching in July 2025. The model achieved 15.9% accuracy on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, nearly doubling Claude Opus 4’s previous best of 8.6%. This test specifically measures abstract reasoning and human-like problem-solving. Most AI systems struggle to reach 5% on this assessment, making Grok 4’s performance a significant leap.
On the original ARC-AGI benchmark, Grok 4 scored 66.6%, surpassing all known competitors. The model also earned perfect scores on advanced math tests: 100% on AIME25 (American Invitational Mathematics Examination), beating Claude 4 Opus’s 75.5% and Gemini 2.5 Pro’s 88.0%.
On Humanity’s Last Exam, a comprehensive 2,500+ question test across STEM and humanities designed to measure genuine reasoning rather than memorization, Grok 4 Heavy scored 44.4%, nearly doubling Gemini 2.5 Pro’s 25.4%.
Colossus: The infrastructure giant behind xAI
Aerial view of the Colossus supercomputer facility in Memphis showing the large industrial building and surrounding infrastructure.
xAI’s AGI ambitions rest on Colossus, currently the world’s largest AI training supercomputer which built in just 122 days at a former Electrolux warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee, Colossus initially ran on 100,000 Nvidia H100/H200 GPUs plus approximately 30,000 GB200 NVL72 systems. By August 2025, the system had doubled to 200,000 GPUs and plans to eventually reach 1 million GPUs.
Colossus 2, currently under construction and will operate at gigawatt scale, enough energy to power a small city. According to SemiAnalysis industry research, xAI’s total datacenter capacity will exceed Meta and Anthropic by Q3 2025, creating the world’s largest single-coherent AI training cluster. The facility uses Tesla Megapacks for energy storage and backup power.
This massive infrastructure enables several key advantages for Grok 5 development like sophisticated training techniques with advanced reinforcement learning, multi-modal training across diverse data types, and the ability to rapidly scale and adapt as requirements change.
In October 2025, Musk revealed a fundamental change in xAI’s strategy that hints at Grok 5’s breakthrough capabilities. He announced that within 4-6 weeks, xAI aims to eliminate all heuristic-based algorithms from X’s recommendation system entirely with Grok AI.
According to Financial Times reports, xAI is developing “world models” advanced AI systems that can navigate and design physical environments, going beyond large language models by training on video and data from robots. These models aim to provide real-time, causal understanding of physics and how objects interact in different environments.
xAI has approximately 30 million weekly users and is valued at roughly $200 billion (with reports of $10-20 billion in new financing being raised). The company reportedly burns through approximately $10 billion per year due to heavy investment in computing infrastructure. Despite these challenges, xAI’s Colossus infrastructure and Grok 4’s benchmark performance have positioned it as a serious contender in the AGI race.
Metaculus forecasters, a community known for accurate predictions, currently estimate a 25% chance of AGI by 2027 and 50% by 2031, though these estimates have dramatically shortened from predictions of 2050+ just a few years ago. Samotsvety superforecasters estimated approximately 28% chance of AGI by 2030 in 2023.
If Musk’s prediction proves accurate, the implications would be transformative. According to the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, AGI could eventually lead to Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), systems more intelligent than AGI and all of humanity combined.
Musk confirmed that Grok 5 training began in September 2025, with release expected before the end of 2025. He described the upcoming release as “crushingly good,” building on Grok 4’s already impressive capabilities. The model will likely follow xAI’s established pattern, initial availability through X Premium+ subscriptions, followed by API access for developers, and eventually broader integration across Musk’s companies including Tesla.
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