Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has released a new AI coding tool, designed to be faster and more cost-effective than its competitors like OpenAI’s Codex and Microsoft Github’s Copilot. This product is an “agentic coding model,” which means it can autonomously handle programming tasks.
“Its strength lies in delivering strong performance in an economical, compact form factor, making it a versatile choice for tackling common coding tasks quickly and cost-effectively,” the company said in a statement, as reported by Reuters. This model called “grok-code-fast-1,” would be available for free for a limited time with select launch partners including GitHub Copilot and Windsurf.
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A number of tech companies including Microsoft and OpenAI have been involved in making AI coding tools available to users lately. Microsoft had launched the Github AI copilot feature at its annual Build software developer conference. CEO Satya Nadella had said in April that around 20% to 30% of overall code in Microsoft is being written by AI. OpenAI had made its coding tool Codex available to ChatGPT plus users in June.
xAI stated that grok-code-fast-1 has been built from scratch starting with a brand-new model architecture. “To lay a robust foundation, we carefully assembled a pre-training corpus rich with programming-related content. For post-training, we curated high-quality datasets that reflect real-world pull requests and coding tasks,” the company said.
“Throughout the training process, we collaborated closely with our launch partners to refine and sharpen the model’s behavior inside their agentic platforms. grok-code-fast-1 has mastered the use of common tools like grep, terminal, and file editing, and thus should feel right at home in your favorite IDE,” it added.
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xAI is also teaming up with select launch partners — including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Cline, Roo Code, Kilo Code, opencode, and Windsurf — to offer the tool for free for a limited amount of time.
This comes at a time of intense competition between AI companies, and during the rise of “vibe-coding,” or AI assisted coding. AI-based coding assistants like Cursor, Replit, and Windsurf have become increasingly popular. Earlier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed he enjoys “vibe coding with Replit” in his spare time. At the same time, there have been concerns about the impact of AI on the job market. A Stanford study recently revealed that AI adoption is linked to a drop in employment of around 13% among early-career Americans. Software engineering is one of the areas that has seen a significant decline in entry-level employment since 2022.