xAI debuts a faster and more cost-effective version of Grok 4

xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, has released a new version of its Grok 4 model, called Grok 4 Fast. This updated model is reportedly faster and more cost-effective than its predecessor, offering similar performance while using 40% fewer thinking tokens on average. According to xAI, Grok 4 Fast results in a 98% reduction in price to achieve the same performance on frontier benchmarks as Grok 4. The new model features a unified architecture that can transition between a "reasoning" model for complex requests and a "non-reasoning" model for quick responses. In tests on the LMArena platform, Grok 4 Fast ranks first in search-related tasks and eighth in text-related tasks. The release of Grok 4 Fast comes a few months after the release of Grok 4 and an "extremely problematic antisemitic meltdown" of xAI's chatbot. xAI has made Grok 4 Fast available for all users, including the free ones, on web, iOS, and Android. The article notes that the LLM (Large Language Model) race is highly competitive, and it's only a matter of time before other major AI companies release their own updates to remain competitive.