Musk’s xAI Grok overtakes ChatGPT, becomes No. 1 AI app on App Store

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok 3, has surged to the top of Apple’s App Store, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The milestone comes just three days after xAI rolled out the latest version of Grok, which Musk has called the “smartest AI on Earth.”

As of this morning, Grok is the most downloaded free app in the U.S., outpacing competitors in the AI chatbot space. The surge follows the release of Grok 3, which introduces Advanced Reasoning Capabilities (Think Mode) and Deep Search, pushing the app ahead of its rivals.

Elon Musk’s xAI Grok 3 AI chatbot tops Apple’s App Store, Dethrones ChatGPT

App Store rankings show that Grok 3 has overtaken ChatGPT to take the top spot, with Google Gemini and DeepSeek sitting in third and fifth place, respectively. Musk previously highlighted that Grok 3’s pretraining used ten times more computing power than its predecessor, setting the stage for its rapid rise.

This latest shake-up in AI rankings signals growing competition in the chatbot market, where companies are racing to refine their models and capture user attention.

Musk and the xAI team launched Grok 3 on February 17 at 8 p.m. Pacific Time (11 p.m. Eastern), giving the public its first look at what Musk described as the ‘smartest AI on Earth.’ In a demo posted on X, Grok 3 showed impressive results in math, science, and coding benchmarks, outperforming competitors like Gemini-2 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and GPT-4o in key performance tests.

The primary Grok 3 model is being rolled out gradually through the Grok app, while a smaller ‘Grok 3 mini’ version offers faster response times.

Both models have secured top spots on the AIME‘24, GPQA, and LiveCodeBench leaderboards, with Grok 3 landing the number one position on Chatbot Arena. They also come with ‘reasoner’ variations designed to solve problems through more analytical thinking, similar to OpenAI’s o3-mini and DeepSeek R1.

Training Grok 3 took ten times more computing power than its predecessor, Grok 2, with xAI relying on its Colossus supercomputer—a system equipped with 200,000 H100 GPUs.

Why It Matters

The success of Grok 3 positions xAI, just two years old, as a key contender in the AI space. Still, the competition isn’t standing still. OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-4.5 and, eventually, GPT-5. Meanwhile, Anthropic, DeepMind, and Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and DeepSeek are all working to secure their share of the AI market. The race is heating up, and Grok 3’s rapid ascent is just the beginning.

According to xAI, Grok 3 was trained with synthetic data, which Musk says helps it go back over its own work to spot and fix mistakes. This self-correcting behavior might give it an edge over other models that sometimes double down on errors.

You’ll be able to access Grok 3 through Musk’s social platform X, formerly known as Twitter, and possibly through its own app. xAI is pushing to establish itself in the crowded AI market, and Grok 3 is a big part of that strategy.

Behind the scenes, xAI is reportedly trying to raise $10 billion, which would give the company a valuation of about $75 billion. The plan is to pour that money into expanding data center capacity and refining their AI models. Musk has made it clear that xAI isn’t just here to play around. His goal is to build AI tools that focus on truth and transparency, standing apart from competitors like OpenAI and Google.

Late last year, xAI has closed a massive $6 billion Series C funding round. This latest investment includes high-profile names like A16Z, Blackrock, and Fidelity Management & Research Company.

With the demo happening tonight, expectations are sky-high. Will Grok 3 live up to the hype and prove it’s more than just big talk? We’ll find out soon enough.

Musk founded xAI in 2023 and later introduced Grok as a direct challenger to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.