Elon Musk just can't help himself with the ambitious timelines. Speaking with billionaire investor Ron Baron at Baron Capital's annual investment conference on Friday, the xAI founder announced that Grok 5 will arrive in the first three months of 2026—a delay from the original late-2025 target—but when it does, it'll be packing some serious computational firepower.

Bigger, Faster, and Maybe Smarter

The headline number is 6 trillion parameters, which is double what Grok 3 and Grok 4 are working with. But parameters alone don't tell the whole story. According to Musk, Grok 5 is being trained on "inherently multimodal" data, meaning it'll seamlessly handle text, images, video, and audio. This isn't just about reading and writing anymore—it's about understanding real-time video and using advanced tools on the fly.

Musk described the new model as "extremely" intelligent and fast, then dropped the real kicker: he believes there's roughly a 10% chance it could reach human-level intelligence. That's artificial general intelligence (AGI) territory, the kind of breakthrough that would fundamentally reshape, well, everything.

Dell Technologies (DELL) CEO Michael Dell shared the video of Musk's comments on X, adding, "2026 is going to be exciting!" Clearly, some people are buying the vision.

The AGI Debate Continues

This isn't the first time Musk has floated the AGI possibility. Back in September, he said he now believes xAI could reach AGI with Grok 5—a milestone he previously thought was unlikely. His optimism followed strong performance data from Grok 4 on the ARC-AGI leaderboard, which measures an AI's ability to reason and solve novel problems compared to models like ChatGPT.

But not everyone's convinced. Andrej Karpathy, a former senior director of AI at Tesla Inc. (TSLA) and founding member of OpenAI, has said AGI is still several years away and nowhere near the leap some industry leaders are claiming. So take the 10% estimate with whatever grain of salt feels appropriate.

The Space Race, But for AI

Whatever skepticism exists, xAI's momentum is undeniable. JPMorgan analyst Brenda Duverce compared the company's rise since its July 2023 launch to "the fervor of the 1960s space race." With more than $22 billion in funding and a $113 billion valuation, xAI is operating on a "move fast, fix things" philosophy—a playful twist on Silicon Valley's old "move fast and break things" mantra.

The real advantage? Grok is embedded directly into X, turning the platform into a massive, real-time testing ground with over 600 million users. That's a lot of feedback data for building what Musk calls "truth-seeking companions" that deliver tailored insights.

Whether Grok 5 actually achieves human-level intelligence or just becomes another impressively powerful AI tool, 2026 is shaping up to be a fascinating year in the race toward AGI.