Elon Musk and xAI have made Grok 2.5 open source, giving developers worldwide direct access to its code, with Grok 3 set to follow in early 2026.
Elon Musk and his AI company xAI have released Grok 2.5 as open source, giving users worldwide the ability to download, run, and modify the chatbot’s code. The model’s source code is now directly available on Hugging Face, allowing developers and researchers to customise it for their own use cases.
Musk also confirmed that Grok 3 will be made open source within six months, with a likely release in February 2026. This move continues xAI’s push to make its language models accessible to a broader community.
Although Grok 2.5 is an older model—already superseded by Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, which launched in July 2025—it still offers key improvements over Grok 1, the company’s earlier open-source release.
The Grok series began nearly two years ago as a premium feature for X’s paying subscribers. In March 2024, xAI open sourced the first version of Grok, though it primarily catered to technically skilled users who could tweak the code. By November 2024, Grok was made freely available on X to non-paying users, albeit with restrictions.
Musk and xAI have consistently emphasised their commitment to democratising AI through open source releases, positioning transparency and accessibility as central to their strategy. The latest release underscores this approach, with Grok 2.5 now in the hands of the global developer community and Grok 3 soon to follow.
Social media users have reacted strongly to the announcement, with many expressing surprise at the chatbot’s capabilities and renewed interest in Musk’s AI initiatives.
