Elon Musk Admits to Using OpenAI Models for xAI's Grok Training

On April 30, 2026, Elon Musk admitted in a California federal court that his AI startup, xAI, 'partly' relied on OpenAI's models while training its chatbot, 'Grok.' This is a rare confession of using 'model distillation' (distillation) techniques to build more capable and affordable models amidst fierce competition in the AI industry. While Musk has long criticized OpenAI's data sourcing methods, this testimony reveals that he took a practical shortcut during the actual development process.

"Partly." — Elon Musk, during federal court testimony on April 30, 2026.

The admission came during a lawsuit Musk filed against OpenAI and Sam Altman. In court, Musk was asked if xAI applied distillation techniques to OpenAI models to train Grok, to which he replied that it is a common practice among AI companies. When the questioner asked if that meant "yes," Musk confirmed the use of OpenAI technology by answering "partly."

Mechanisms of Model Distillation and Industry Practices

Model distillation is a technique that uses the outputs of already established large models to train smaller or new models faster and more affordably. It is analyzed that xAI accelerated Grok's performance by using OpenAI's API or chatbot responses as data. While this method increases technical efficiency, it raises significant ethical and legal controversies regarding the use of a competitor's intellectual property.

• OpenAI and Anthropic have maintained a strong opposition to third-party model distillation attempts using their APIs.
• Security concerns have spread within the industry as cases of Chinese companies using distillation techniques to enhance the performance of open-source models have become frequent.
• On April 30, 2026, OpenAI responded by announcing enhanced account security features, including the introduction of passkeys and options to exclude training data.

Musk's admission directly conflicts with xAI's brand identity. Grok has been promoted as the "most unfiltered" independent AI, but the fact that it used data from competitor OpenAI for training could damage this marketing narrative. Particularly, as Musk is pursuing a lawsuit criticizing OpenAI's closed nature, the fact that his own company relied on that technology may work against him in the legal battle.

xAI has admitted to flaws in its initial architecture and is currently undergoing a major redesign as of 2026. Musk stated that xAI aims to reach a level comparable to OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic by mid-2026. To achieve this, xAI is investing a massive $30 billion annually and executing an ambitious plan to expand its GPU capacity to over 1 million units.

Grok 5 and the 6-Trillion Parameter Leap Toward AGI

The most critical milestone in xAI's roadmap is the completion of 'Grok 5' training, scheduled for mid-2026. Grok 5 is designed as a massive architecture with 6 trillion parameters, aiming for a technical leap that overwhelms existing models. Musk is drawing industry attention by claiming the probability of this model reaching Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is "10% and rising."

However, the AI research community remains skeptical of Musk's optimism regarding the possibility of reaching AGI. It is widely pointed out that AGI with human-level reasoning capabilities remains at a theoretical stage and is difficult to achieve simply by increasing the number of parameters. Nevertheless, xAI continues its aggressive expansion based on an infrastructure of over 1 million GPUs.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is raising security barriers in response to xAI's moves. New security features announced on April 30, 2026, strengthened options for users to choose not to have their conversation content used for model training. This is interpreted as an attempt to block competitors like xAI from unauthorized collection of their data for model distillation.

In conclusion, Elon Musk's recent court admission clearly illustrates the complex interests within the AI industry. It reveals the technical limitations and the pressure of the speed race, where one must utilize a competitor's achievements while emphasizing independent technological prowess. Whether xAI can completely break free from OpenAI's influence and show the first signs of the promised AGI through Grok 5 will be a major point of observation for the industry.