Model launches
Musk says Grok V9-Medium has finished training
An announcement, not a release. The brief.
The answer
On 25 May 2026 Musk said xAI's ~1.5T-parameter Grok V9-Medium had finished training.
What happened
On 25 May 2026, Elon Musk said xAI's V9-Medium — reportedly ~1.5 trillion parameters, around three times the current production model — had finished training, with internal evaluations described as positive. A mid-June public release was floated in subsequent tech coverage. By mid-June: no confirmed date, no model card, no independent benchmark numbers. The separately hyped Grok 5 — a different, reportedly even larger model — remained in training, and prediction markets were skeptical of a June ship for that one too. xAI's current developer-accessible flagship is Grok 4.3, per the official developer docs.
Reports described V9-Medium as targeting a coding leadership position, with a parameter count roughly triple xAI's current production model — and a mid-June release window that slipped without a public update.
Why caution is warranted
Three reasons to hold back. First, these are unverified claims: the parameter count, the 'positive' eval results, and the timeline all come from xAI with no third-party confirmation and no published technical report. Second, xAI's release timelines have slipped before — the floated mid-June window passed without a public update, a named pattern, not editorial sniping. Third, parameter count alone tells you nothing about quality: smaller, well-tuned models regularly beat larger ones on real-world tasks, so '1.5 trillion' is a measure of training cost, not of how good the model is. 'Finished training' is a genuine internal milestone, but it is not 'shipped', not benchmarked, and not a product you can evaluate. The signal to upgrade from 'intent' to 'real' is simple: a model card with numbers and a callable API.
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok V9-Medium released?
How reliable is Musk's claim?
What is the difference between V9-Medium and Grok 5?
Sources
- Grok AI New Model Triples Parameter Count, Targets Coding Lead: Release Expected Mid-June — Tech Times, 28 May 2026
- Grok 5: Release Date & All We Know So Far (June 2026) — Fello AI, 5 June 2026
- Grok 4.3 — models — xAI, 3 June 2026