| Musk and Zuck’s AI comeback |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
| Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have muscled their way back into AI’s elite ranks, closing the gap on a new generation of Silicon Valley startups, Axios’ Madison Mills and Zachary Basu write. Why it matters: Recent gains by tech giants SpaceX and Meta — long stuck in AI’s second tier — are putting pressure on a hierarchy dominated by OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies released models this week with performance and pricing that would’ve been hard to imagine from either lab a year ago. SpaceX’s Grok 4.6 scored essentially even with OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol Max and just behind Anthropic’s Fable 5 Max on the closely watched Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Promising “something special,” Musk said Grok 4.7 should arrive in three to four weeks and predicted it will “exceed all current models” after additional training on a massive trove of SpaceX data. Meta is trying to squeeze the frontier from below. Its new models deliver competitive performance at dramatically lower cost — including Muse Glimmer, an open-weight system small enough to run locally on a laptop. Zoom in: As OpenAI and Anthropic pulled ahead, Musk and Zuckerberg answered with the full force of their empires — spending billions on talent, infrastructure and acquisitions.Zuckerberg overhauled Meta’s AI effort after the disappointing launch of Llama 4, then invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought aboard its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead the push. Musk went even further, folding xAI into SpaceX and agreeing to acquire Cursor for $60 billion — bringing massive computing power, proprietary SpaceX data and a fast-growing AI coding platform under one roof. Between the lines: The AI race is starting to reward more than raw intelligence, as price becomes a decisive advantage for many users. Reality check: Anthropic and OpenAI still hold pole position — with even more capable models waiting in the wings, including systems deemed too sensitive for public release.Share this story. |
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Zoom in: As OpenAI and Anthropic pulled ahead, Musk and Zuckerberg answered with the full force of their empires — spending billions on talent, infrastructure and acquisitions.
Reality check: Anthropic and OpenAI still hold pole position — with even more capable models waiting in the wings, including systems deemed