Elon Musk’s xAI to release new Grok 3 Mini AI model

xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup founded by Elon Musk, is set to release Grok 3 Mini, a new language model designed for efficiency and affordability.

This development comes after Google's recent cost drop with the Gemini 2.5 Flash model.

The Grok 3 family currently includes six variants, with the Grok 3 Mini available in four versions: slow and fast, each with low or high reasoning capacity.

According to the company, Grok 3 Mini is purpose-built for speed and affordability while maintaining an integrated reasoning process.

This capability distinguishes it from the larger Grok 3 model, which operates without explicit reasoning.

xAI has claimed that Grok 3 Mini has outperformed more expensive flagship models in several areas, including math, programming, and college-level science benchmarks.

Notably, Grok 3 Mini is said to be up to five times cheaper than other reasoning models, adding pressure to the AI pricing landscape.

Another key feature of Grok 3 Mini is the inclusion of a full reasoning trace with every API response, providing developers with more transparency into model behaviour.

However, ongoing research suggests that these apparent "thought processes" can sometimes be misleading.

It should be noted that both Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini are now accessible to developers via the xAI API.