200,000 GPUs Forge Grok 3

Author | Wang Lei

Editor | Qin Zhangyong

The smartest AI on Earth has arrived, according to Elon Musk himself.

Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, recently held a technology demonstration, officially unveiling its latest large model, Grok 3.

This groundbreaking model is the first in human history to be trained on 200,000 GPUs, boasting a training computational power ten times that of its predecessor, Grok-2.

Amidst his scrutiny of various U.S. institutions' financial statements, Musk made a personal appearance during the livestream to support the launch.

True to his procrastinating ways, the event, originally scheduled for noon, was delayed until 12:20 PM.

The technology demonstration was packed with substantial content, showcasing various benchmark test data. Grok 3 has indeed proven to be "the smartest AI on Earth," as Musk claimed.

In competitions such as the U.S. AIME math contest, GPQA, and code programming, Grok 3 has surpassed mainstream intelligent large models like Gemini 2 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4o, and the domestically popular DeepSeek R1.

Interestingly, before the release of Grok 3, Benjamin De Kraker, an engineer on the Grok data team, stated on their media platform X that Grok 3 could only rank fourth. However, it now appears that this engineer has been dismissed.

01 Remarkable Reasoning Capabilities

The launch event featured four individuals, including Musk, with two Chinese nationals among them.

Grok 3's most significant highlight is the introduction of the "Chain of Thought" capability.

This feature allows the AI to think through complex problems step-by-step, much like a human. When faced with a complex scientific question, Grok 3 doesn't provide a direct answer but, instead, analyzes the problem step-by-step, much like a teacher, before offering a clear and accurate response. This gives users a glimpse into the AI's internal reasoning process when solving problems.

For instance, when solving math problems, the model displays intermediate derivation steps rather than directly outputting the result. However, to prevent the core algorithm from being copied, xAI obscures the thinking process to a certain extent, as Grok 3 has not been open-sourced yet.

Similar to China's DeepSeek, Grok 3 employs a combination of deep learning and reinforcement learning. Deep learning enables the model to extract features and patterns from vast amounts of data, while reinforcement learning allows Grok 3 to continuously adjust its strategies during training to obtain higher reward signals.

In reasoning tasks, Grok 3 optimizes its reasoning path through multiple attempts and verifications to find the optimal solution.

To comprehensively assess Grok 3's performance, the xAI team demonstrated benchmark tests in multiple fields during the livestream, covering general mathematical reasoning, STEM and science general knowledge, and computer science programming.

According to the official test data, Grok-3 and Grok-3 mini surpass or are comparable to competitors like Gemini, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT in math, science, code, and other performance metrics.

To demonstrate its capabilities, Musk conducted an online demonstration, having Grok-3 generate code for a 3D animation of a space launch, which successfully ran.

The screen displayed an animation of a spacecraft traveling back and forth between Earth and Mars. The xAI team stated that this isn't a simple animation; it requires the AI model to first understand complex physical knowledge, such as Kepler's laws and related issues, to achieve reasonable trajectory planning.

Grok 3 was also tasked with creating a new game that combines Tetris and Bejeweled on-site.

During the live demonstration, the Python script generated by Grok 3 defined constants, colors, block shapes, and other elements of the game.

In actual operation, it presented a fusion gameplay: when at least three blocks of the same color are connected, the gravity mechanism is activated, causing the blocks to disappear and others to fall, similar to Bejeweled's elimination mechanism; simultaneously, the game retains the basic elements of Tetris.

It's worth mentioning that Grok 3 may also be integrated into Tesla vehicles, enabling interaction through voice commands. This means Tesla owners can use Grok to obtain real-time information such as weather conditions and traffic updates. Musk also hinted that Tesla drivers will soon be able to use Grok to handle more complex tasks while driving.

Grok 3 is the third-generation AI model released by xAI, a company founded in July 2023. The company's team members primarily come from OpenAI, DeepMind, and other top AI research firms. Musk's objective in founding xAI is straightforward – to compete with OpenAI.

Less than six months after its establishment, xAI released its first large model, Grok-1, with a parameter count of up to 314 billion, far exceeding OpenAI GPT-3.5's 175 billion, making it the largest open-source large language model at the time. In August 2024, xAI released the updated Grok 2 large model, primarily used for training AI chatbots.

From August last year to February this year, Musk's significant investment made the successful iteration within six months possible. To train Grok 3, xAI utilized the world's largest AI supercomputer, Colossus, composed of over 200,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, completing the training of the large-scale model in just 214 days.

Compared to the second generation, Grok 3 uses 310 times more computing power, achieves a 15-fold performance improvement, and has ten times more training data, demonstrating impressive hardware capabilities.

To maintain its computing power advantage, Musk plans to raise $10 billion to purchase the new generation of GB200 GPU chips for training.

After all, shortly before the release, Musk boldly stated: "We are confident that Grok 3 will be stronger than any other AI, and it's very likely that there will never be an AI stronger than the Grok series again."

In short, the goal is to create the strongest AI on Earth.

02 Musk's Popularity Breeds Controversy

Musk has been exceptionally busy lately, not only promoting his own large AI model and calling for the acquisition of OpenAI but also serving as the head of the newly established "Government Efficiency Department," engaged in "drastic" reforms of U.S. government agencies.

As the saying goes, "where there's fame, there's scandal." Amidst his AI and political battles, Musk has also attracted a lot of trouble.

First, trouble brews at home. According to the Washington Post, a recording of an internal Tesla meeting was exposed. During this meeting, Tesla employees and senior management openly expressed concerns about CEO Musk's alliance with Trump, believing that Musk's deep involvement in politics would harm Tesla's long-term goals.

Therefore, some have suggested that Tesla might be better off if Musk resigns.

For Musk, who personally built Tesla, the idea that Tesla employees want him out is definitely not good news.

However, based on reality, it's not surprising that such protests would arise within Tesla. Since Musk took office, Tesla's stock price and fundamentals have begun to decline.

Since Musk's "American Transformation" began, Tesla's stock price has fallen by a cumulative 16.6%, with a market value evaporation of $227.3 billion (approximately RMB 1.65 trillion).

In terms of sales, Tesla registrations in the U.S. fell by 10.8% year-on-year in January 2025; in California, the decline reached 12%. The situation in the European market is even worse, with Tesla sales in France falling by 63% and Germany by 59% in January.

In addition, many Tesla users have begun to boycott Musk, and some have even developed a sense of "Tesla shame."

Alain Roy, a Tesla owner from Quebec, Canada, said that due to Musk's actions on his inauguration day, he no longer wants to support him and has decided to sell both Teslas at home and cancel his order for the Cybertruck.

According to a survey of 26,000 Tesla owners by the Dutch current affairs program EenVandaag, it shows that the once "Tesla pride" has turned into "Tesla shame," and many people are planning to distance themselves from Musk.

Among them, 31% of the surveyed Tesla owners said they were considering selling or had already sold their cars due to Musk's actions, and 40% said the CEO's behavior and stance made them ashamed to drive a Tesla.

Initially, it was only a few Tesla owners expressing dissatisfaction through individual actions, but it has now escalated into a larger-scale public boycott.

According to the Financial Times, over the weekend, a large number of protesters gathered outside dozens of Tesla stores in North America, protesting Musk's radical cuts to government spending and urging people in the showrooms not to buy cars.

But it seems no one can stop Musk, and he certainly knows what kind of public opinion he faces. Currently, he has a pinned tweet on the X platform:

"I find the endless insults I suffer on the platform I own incredibly amusing."