AI coding: xAI aims for top position with Grok Code Fast 1

With comparatively lower prices and greater speed, xAI wants to secure its place among the AI coding tools. With Grok Code Fast 1, the company has now introduced an AI model specially developed for autonomous programming tasks. It will be offered free of charge for a short time at the start via various developer platforms.

Elon Musk's AI company explained at the launch that Grok Code Fast 1 was developed "from the ground up with a brand new architecture". According to xAi, it has been trained with programming-rich data sets, followed by retraining on real-world coding tasks such as pull requests and bug fixes.

Focus on speed and cost efficiency

The new model positions itself as a "fast and economical" alternative to established solutions such as GitHub Copilot and OpenAI's Codex. With a processing speed of up to 92 tokens per second and a response time of 67 milliseconds, Grok Code Fast 1 is set to set new standards in response speed. At USD 0.20 per million input tokens and USD 1.50 per million output tokens, the pricing is around 80 to 95 percent cheaper than the competition.

Unlike conventional code completion tools, Grok Code Fast 1 is optimized for so-called "agentic coding". The system can independently use tools such as grep, terminal and file editors to perform programming tasks in a loop of reasoning and tool calls. This capability distinguishes it from traditional assistants, which mainly make code suggestions. The model shows particular strengths in the programming languages TypeScript, Python, Java, Rust, C++ and Go. It achieved a score of 70.8 percent on the SWE-Bench Verified benchmark, which puts it in the top group of available coding AIs.

For the market launch, xAI is relying on a broad partnership strategy. The model is available free of charge for a limited time via partners such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Cline, Roo Code, KiloCode, OpenCode and Windsurf.

The history of its development is interesting: the model was initially released in secret at the end of August 2025 under the code name "Sonic", while xAI collected community feedback and developed several updates. xAI is already working on improvements for future versions. A new variant is currently in training. It will support multimodal inputs, parallel tool calls and longer context windows.

Intensifying the AI competition

The launch of Grok Code Fast 1 intensifies the already intense competition in the field of AI programming assistants. Microsoft has built up a strong market share with GitHub Copilot, while OpenAI is also present with Codex. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that AI tools now write between 20 and 30 percent of all code in Microsoft products.

(mki)