xAI · No date announced · checked Oct 6, 2026
Grok 5 release date: what is confirmed and what is rumored
Latest from Elon Musk, on X, Sep 14, 2026: “Grok 5 maybe better than anything. We shall see.”
Confirmed
xAI has published no date for Grok 5. Its newest shipped model is Grok 4.7, released September 21. Elon Musk wrote on X on September 13 that Grok 4.8, at 2.5 trillion parameters on a new C++ stack, would finish training that week and start reinforcement learning, and on September 14 laid out the ladder: Grok 4.7 near Opus 5.0, Grok 4.9 in the Astra and Fable class, and "Grok 5 maybe better than anything. We shall see." Neither post carried a timeline for 4.8, 4.9 or 5.
Rumored
Musk told 36Kr on November 17, 2025 that Grok 5 would launch in the first quarter of 2026 with 6 trillion parameters; that quarter passed with Grok 4.5 arriving in July instead. Search summaries mention a leaked roadmap putting Grok 5 by December; the AILately.com Desk found no such document, and the 6 trillion figure rests on Musk's statement alone.
What would settle it
A grok-5 model on docs.x.ai or an xAI post with a date. Grok 4.8 shipping is the leading indicator.
Evidence, newest first
- Sep 21, 2026
Grok 4.7 released.
- Sep 14, 2026
Musk's ladder: 4.7, 4.9, then Grok 5 "maybe better than anything."
- Sep 13, 2026
Musk: Grok 4.8 finishes training this week and starts RL.
- Aug 12, 2026
Grok 4.6 released.
- Jul 8, 2026
Grok 4.5 released on a 1.5 trillion parameter base.
- Nov 17, 2025
Musk tells 36Kr Grok 5 arrives in Q1 2026 with 6 trillion parameters.