xAI (now SpaceXAI): The Last 12 Months, From Grok 4.1 to the SpaceX IPO

xAI (now SpaceXAI) has had a crowded year: new Grok models, a $20bn raise, a merger into SpaceX, a public listing, a string of regulatory and legal fights, and a rebrand. This retrospective covers 11 October 2025 to 11 October 2026 using primary documents where we could find them. Each item is labelled confirmed (checked against the primary document or the party’s own page), reported (a named outlet, primary not seen) or claim (a benchmark from xAI, or a statement by Elon Musk). Benchmark figures are xAI’s own; Musk’s timelines are his claims, not facts.

A note on naming: the company said “xAI” until mid-2026, then “SpaceXAI”. The X account was renamed @SpaceXAI on 6 July (reported, The Verge), and x.ai page titles and the handle now read “SpaceXSI” (@SpaceXSI). Disclosure: TSN runs its own bots on Grok Bot, a SpaceXAI product.

October to December 2025: models, a Saudi deal, a government contract

• 27 Oct: Grokipedia 0.1 launched, described as “an early version” (confirmed, CNBC) [1].
• 17 Nov: Grok 4.1 to all users (confirmed). xAI claims users preferred it 64.78% of the time in a silent rollout, and that Grok 4.1 Thinking held #1 on LMArena Text with 1483 Elo [2].
• 19 Nov: Grok 4.1 Fast and an Agent Tools API, which xAI calls the “best tool-calling model with a 2M context window” (claim) [3]. Same day, a framework agreement with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN to build GPU data centres; CNBC says both firms said they would jointly develop 500 megawatts (confirmed announcement, no build timeline) [4].
• 11 Dec: El Salvador programme: Grok across “more than 5,000 public schools” for over one million students “over the next two years” (confirmed as a plan) [5].
• 17 Dec: Grok Voice Agent API at $0.05 a minute; xAI claims #1 on Big Bench Audio [6].
• 22 Dec: The US Department of War selected xAI for GenAI.mil, to reach “3 million military and civilian employees” at IL5 “when made generally available” (confirmed) [7]. DefenseScoop reported on 31 August that Grok and ChatGPT are now live there (reported) [8].
• 30 Dec: Grok Business and Grok Enterprise (“no training on it, ever”) [9].

January 2026: Series E, imagery investigations, Colossus 2

• 6 Jan: $20bn Series E, above a $15bn target (confirmed). xAI cited “over one million H100 GPU equivalents” and “approximately 600 million monthly active users across the 𝕏 and Grok apps” (company claims) [10]. CNBC reported a valuation of about $230 billion.
• 7 Jan: Valor Compute Infrastructure raised $5.4bn to buy Nvidia GB200 GPUs and lease them to xAI, with Apollo funds contributing $3.5bn (reported, Data Center Dynamics) [11].
• 5 to 26 Jan: Grok sexualised-imagery controversy. Ofcom opened a formal investigation into X on 12 January; California’s attorney general announced an investigation into xAI on 14 January; the European Commission opened a DSA investigation on 26 January (all confirmed). Indonesia and Malaysia reportedly blocked Grok. We found no decision or fine from Ofcom, the Commission or the ICO as of 11 October, but did not search exhaustively [12].
• 17 Jan: Musk said Colossus 2 was “now operational”, the “First Gigawatt training cluster in the world”, with “Upgrades to 1.5GW in April” (his claim; see contradictions). Via @elonmusk on X, as quoted by Teslarati.
• 28 Jan: Tesla said it invested about $2bn in xAI Series E preferred (confirmed via Tesla’s letter, TechCrunch) [13]. Grok Imagine API launched.
• 30 Jan: SpaceX filed an FCC application for an orbital data centre system of up to one million satellites; the FCC accepted it for filing on 4 February (confirmed) [14].

February to March 2026: SpaceX acquires xAI, founders leave

• 2 Feb: SpaceX acquired xAI (confirmed). CNBC and Reuters reported SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, a combined $1.25 trillion [15].
• 10 to 11 Feb: Co-founders Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba resigned (reported, Reuters). By 28 March, per Business Insider via TechCrunch, Musk was the only original co-founder left (reported) [16].
• 10 Mar: Mississippi regulators approved 41 turbines at xAI affiliate MZX Tech’s Southaven plant (reported); an appeal followed [17].
• Mid-March: Musk said, per Fortune, that “xAI was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up”.

April to May 2026: Cursor, Anthropic, and the S-1

• 21 Apr: SpaceXAI and Cursor agreed a partnership with an option to buy Cursor for $60bn later in 2026 or pay $10bn for the work together (confirmed, quoting a SpaceX post) [18].
• 6 May: Anthropic compute agreement (confirmed). xAI says it gives Anthropic access to Colossus 1, “over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs” (xAI claim). The SpaceX S-1 says Anthropic agreed to pay “$1.25 billion per month through May 2029”, terminable on 90 days’ notice [19]. Also on 6 May Musk said “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI” (his statement, as reported by Xinhua). Via @elonmusk on X.
• 20 May: SpaceX’s public S-1 (confirmed). AI segment: Q1 2026 revenue $818m and loss from operations $(2,469)m; 2025 revenue $3,201m and loss from operations $(6,355)m. It says Colossus and Colossus II “collectively provide approximately 1.0 gigawatt” [20]. SEC staff asked about Musk’s “rebuilt” and “dissolved” remarks, co-founder departures and reported falls in Grok app downloads.
• 25 May: Grok Build, a terminal coding agent, entered early beta (confirmed) [21].

June 2026: Google, the IPO, court wins

• 5 Jun: A SpaceX 8-K disclosed a Google cloud-services agreement: $920m a month for about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, October 2026 to June 2029 (reported from the filing, CNBC) [22].
• 11 Jun: SpaceX priced its IPO at $135.00 a share, trading as SPCX from 12 June; gross proceeds were “approximately $85.7 billion” including the overallotment (confirmed, SpaceX) [23].
• 15 Jun: A federal judge dismissed xAI’s trade-secret suit against OpenAI “without leave to amend” (confirmed, court order). 16 Jun: SpaceX announced the $60bn all-stock Cursor acquisition.

July to August 2026: Grok 4.5, 4.6, Grok Bot

• 12 to 16 Jul: Researchers said the Grok Build CLI uploaded whole repositories. SpaceXAI said retention was disabled by default on 12 July, earlier data would be deleted and Grok Build was open-sourced on 15 July (reported, CyberInsider). No independent audit was disclosed [24].
• 16 Jul: Grok 4.5 (confirmed), “trained alongside Cursor”; xAI’s chart claims DeepSWE 1.0 62.0%; API $2 and $6 per million input and output tokens [25].
• 4 Aug: SpaceX Q2 results (confirmed): AI revenue $2,561m, loss from operations $(1,257)m, AI Adjusted EBITDA $1,146m, AI capex $15,828m, nameplate compute 1.4 GW (1.0 GW in Q1) [26].
• 11 Aug: Grok Bot launched in beta (confirmed) [27].
• 12 Aug: Grok 4.6, which xAI claims “matches GPT-5.6 Sol on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index” (xAI’s chart: Grok 4.6 61, GPT-5.6 Sol 61, Fable 5 (Max) 62) [28].
• 14 Aug: Cursor acquisition completed (confirmed).

September to October 2026: Grok 4.7, a subpoena, a rename

• 14 Sep: Musk said Grok 4.8, “a 2.5T model trained with our new C++ software stack”, would “finish training this week and start RL” (his claim). Via @elonmusk on X. [29]
• 21 Sep: Grok 4.7 (confirmed): a “new, larger base model” at $2 and $6 per million tokens. xAI claims 62.4% on LatchBio’s biosafety benchmark and 46.3% on CursorBench 4.0 (xAI’s table). Reportedly the launch slipped from 12 September [30].
• 28 Sep to 5 Oct: The New York City Council subpoenaed SpaceXAI; at the 5 October hearing no SpaceXAI witness appeared, and the Council said it would pursue the subpoena in court (reported) [31].

Roadmap: what has been announced

Nothing in this section has been delivered. These are plans and claims as of 11 October 2026.

• Grok 5. xAI said on 6 January that it was “currently in training”; the S-1 says it is being trained at Colossus II (confirmed statements, no release date). Musk said on 4 August it “should be out before the end of this year” (his claim). It is not released.
• Grok 4.8, 4.9. Musk said 4.8 would finish training the week of 14 September; he called 4.9 “probably Astra/Fable class” (his claims, no dates). Neither is released; the docs list releases through Grok 4.7.
• Compute. On the 4 August call Musk said the company would “end this year with over 2 gigawatts of compute” and reach “closer to 10 gigawatts … than 5 gigawatts” by end-2027. He also said of a 20 GW tentative target, “I don’t think we’re going to achieve 20GW” (his claims). The S-1 expects the next Colossus II phase to add “at least 220,000 additional GB300 processors and over 400 additional megawatts” (company forward-looking statement).
• Orbital compute. The S-1 expects to begin deploying orbital AI compute satellites “as early as 2028”; Musk said on 4 August “we expect to start launching these next year” (a conflict between the two). Anthropic “expressed interest” in orbital capacity, which is not a commitment.
• Google. Payments start in October 2026, and Google may terminate if SpaceX fails to deliver GPUs by 30 September 2026. Delivery status is not verified.
• Saudi data centres and El Salvador schools are announced plans without published timelines beyond the El Salvador “two years”.
• Terafab, the Tesla-SpaceX chip fab, is a plan (see Related stories). Next check: SpaceX’s Q3 results, date not found.

Contradictions and open questions

• Colossus power. Musk said on 17 January it would upgrade to 1.5 GW in April. The S-1 (20 May) says about 1.0 GW across both sites, and the Q2 release shows 1.4 GW nameplate at 30 June. We do not state 1.5 GW as achieved.
• Anthropic’s scope. xAI said “access to Colossus 1”; SEC staff cited reports of “all of COLOSSUS’ compute capacity”; the S-1 says capacity “across COLOSSUS and COLOSSUS II”. Three wordings; we do not choose.
• Valuation. Reuters and CNBC put xAI at $250bn in the merger; a BBC source reportedly said $125bn, which appears to be an error.
• IPO proceeds. SpaceX IR says gross proceeds of about $85.7bn; the Q2 release says net; some outlets say $75bn at pricing.
• Unknowns. We found no decisions from regulators on the imagery cases, and Grok 4.3 has no first-party release page.

Sources

1. CNBC, 28 Oct 2025, Grokipedia. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/elon-musks-ai-wikipedia-competitor-grokipedia-goes-live.html
2. xAI, Grok 4.1. https://x.ai/news/grok-4-1
3. xAI, Grok 4.1 Fast. https://x.ai/news/grok-4-1-fast
4. xAI, Grok goes global (HUMAIN). https://x.ai/news/grok-goes-global
5. xAI, El Salvador. https://x.ai/news/el-salvador-partnership
6. xAI, Grok Voice Agent API. https://x.ai/news/grok-voice-agent-api
7. xAI, Department of War. https://x.ai/news/us-gov-dept-of-war
8. DefenseScoop, 31 Aug 2026. https://defensescoop.com/2026/08/31/grok-chatgpt-added-to-genai-mil/
9. xAI, Grok Business. https://x.ai/news/grok-business
10. xAI, Series E. https://x.ai/news/series-e
11. Data Center Dynamics, Valor $5.4bn. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/valor-equity-partners-raises-54bn-to-buy-nvidia-gpus-for-xai/
12. Ofcom (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/ofcom-launches-investigation-into-x-over-grok-sexualised-imagery); California AG (https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-launches-investigation-xai-grok-over-undressed-sexual-ai); European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_26_203/IP_26_203_EN.pdf); ICO (https://cy.ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2026/02/ico-announces-investigation-into-grok)
13. TechCrunch, 28 Jan 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/tesla-invested-2b-in-elon-musks-xai/
14. FCC DA 26-113. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.txt
15. xAI/SpaceX, 2 Feb 2026 (https://x.ai/news/xai-joins-spacex); CNBC (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/03/musk-xai-spacex-biggest-merger-ever.html)
16. TechCrunch, 28 Mar 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/28/elon-musks-last-co-founder-reportedly-leaves-xai/
17. USA Today, 10 Mar 2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/development/2026/03/10/elon-musk-xai-southaven-turbines-approved/89019342007/
18. CNBC, 21 Apr 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/21/spacex-says-it-can-buy-cursor-later-this-year-for-60-billion-or-pay-10-billion-for-our-work-together.html
19. xAI, Anthropic compute partnership. https://x.ai/news/anthropic-compute-partnership
20. SpaceX S-1 (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm); SEC staff letter and response (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036964/filename1.htm)
21. xAI, Grok Build. https://x.ai/news/grok-build-cli
22. CNBC, 5 Jun 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/google-to-pay-spacex-920-million-a-month-for-xai-compute-capacity.html
23. SpaceX IR, IPO pricing. https://ir.spacex.com/updates/releases-details/2026/Space-Exploration-Technologies-Corp–Announces-Pricing-of-Initial-Public-Offering/default.aspx
24. xAI, Grok Build open source (https://x.ai/news/grok-build-open-source); CyberInsider (https://cyberinsider.com/spacexai-admits-grok-retained-developer-data-in-open-source-announcement/)
25. xAI, Grok 4.5. https://x.ai/news/grok-4-5
26. SpaceX Q2 2026 8-K release. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026052515/earningsreleaseq22608042.htm
27. xAI, Introducing Grok Bot. https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot
28. xAI, Grok 4.6 (as cited in the xAI news page; figures are xAI’s).
29. Elon Musk (@elonmusk), X post, 14 Sep 2026, read via the X API. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2099308197802631191
30. xAI, Grok 4.7 and docs release notes (figures are xAI’s).
31. NYC Council press release and amNewYork, 28 Sep to 5 Oct 2026; see TSN’s own coverage below.

X posts quoted via outlets (not read directly): Musk, 17 Jan 2026 (Teslarati embed); Musk, 6 May 2026 (Xinhua). Quotes of Musk’s 4 August call are from the SpaceX transcript.

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