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Grok-1

Grok-1 is xAI's Apache-2.0 open-weight 314B MoE base model with an 8192-token context window and Q3 2023 training knowledge.

General Purpose Language ModelText Freemium
In plain English

What is this model and why does it matter?

Grok-1 is xAI's 314B open-weight MoE base model with an 8192-token context window and Apache 2.0 license.

ResearchMoE architecture studyHistorical benchmarkingCustom post-training experiments
Model overview

Grok-1: features, use cases and important details

Grok-1 is xAI’s original open-weight mixture-of-experts base model.

Verified model facts

xAI released the 314B-parameter weights and architecture under Apache 2.0 on March 17, 2024. The repository lists eight experts, two used per token and an 8,192-token maximum sequence length.

Current status

The open checkpoint remains downloadable, but it is not a current xAI API model and is not the same as newer Grok products.

Best fit

It is best for research, MoE architecture study, historical benchmarking and custom post-training.

Limitations

It is a raw base model, requires very large hardware and has only an 8K context window.

Get started

How to use this model

  1. Read xAI's open-release notes.
  2. Download the Grok-1 weights using official xAI instructions.
  3. Provision enough GPU memory for the 314B model.
  4. Remember it is a raw base checkpoint, not a chat assistant.
  5. Apply your own post-training and evaluation if needed.
Copy and try

Example prompts

  • Use this base checkpoint in a controlled language-model research experiment.
  • Evaluate next-token modeling on this benchmark corpus.
Capabilities

What it can do

  • 314B MoE architecture
  • 8 experts
  • 2 experts active per token
  • 8192 context
  • Base language modeling
Best for

Practical use cases

  • Research
  • Architecture study
  • Historical model comparison
  • Custom fine-tuning
Pricing

What does it cost?

Apache 2.0 open weights. Grok-1 is not a current xAI API model, so no current provider token price applies.

Simple summaryThe weights are permissively licensed, but 314B-scale inference requires substantial compute and memory.

What stands out

  • Apache 2.0 license
  • Official xAI weights
  • Historically significant MoE release

Things to consider

  • 314B model is expensive to run
  • Only 8K context
  • Raw base model is not instruction tuned
Limitations

Important restrictions and trade-offs

  • The open checkpoint is not a current Grok API model
  • No independent web search capability
  • Can hallucinate and is not chat-aligned
SimplifyAITools verdict

Our editorial take

A valuable research release because of its permissive license and architecture, but unsuitable as a plug-and-play modern assistant.

References

Primary sources

  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗
  3. Open source 3 ↗
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