I think they put the new model behind a $40 paywall so less people use it. The model seems only marginally better than open source models, based on xAI's own in

I think they put the new model behind a $40 paywall so less people use it. The model seems only marginally better than open source models, based on xAI's own internal tests, and they spend $$$ money for it to run. Elon talked in the second half about making one of the largest GPU data centers just to get this running. I guess the next iteration they'll be trying to reduce the costs. Also, they will be open sourcing Grok 2, which is probably pretty behind at this point, but will still be interesting for people to check out.