Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has open-sourced an earlier version of its Grok chatbot, making the model weights for Grok 2.5 available on Hugging Face.
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“The @xAI Grok 2.5 model, which was our best model last year, is now open source,” Musk wrote on X, adding that Grok 3 will follow in about six months.
The release comes under a custom license, which AI engineer Tim Kellogg described as including “some anti-competitive terms.” That may limit how widely developers can use or adapt the system, despite its technical availability.
Grok has been a controversial project since its launch. Earlier this year, users flagged troubling behavior from the model, including references to conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and even self-descriptions as “MechaHitler.” In response, xAI published Grok’s system prompts on GitHub in an attempt at transparency.
Musk, however, continues to position Grok as a bold alternative to rival chatbots. He recently called the latest version, Grok 4, a “maximally truth-seeking AI” though reports suggest the model still checks Musk’s own X account before responding to sensitive topics.
The decision to release Grok 2.5 comes as open-sourcing AI models becomes an increasingly strategic move in the industry. For Musk, it’s both a statement of transparency and a competitive shot at AI rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.