Elon Musk admitted that Anthropic, which rivals his very own SpaceXAI, is the front-runner in the artificial intelligence space, as a series of advanced models have been released by major AI players.
Musk made the surprising statement in response to a user’s X post, saying he could “kill” Anthropic if he wanted to do so. The tech mogul said he does not intend to do that, reflecting his competitive philosophy.
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“I was clearly wrong about Anthropic,” Musk said. “They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon.
“And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That’s not my style.”
In September 2025, Musk said he believed that “winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic.” Less than a year later, he backtracked from that critical comment after Anthropic released Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5.
Both models were initially released to the public last month before Anthropic restricted access to them globally in response to export controls imposed by the Trump administration. The U.S. government was concerned about reports of suspected Chinese hackers accessing Mythos without authorization. After a thorough review of Anthropic’s proprietary technology, the Commerce Department lifted the export restrictions on Mythos and Fable, allowing the company to restore access to the models worldwide.
OpenAI similarly followed suit this week, releasing the latest version of ChatGPT to the public on Thursday after undergoing a federal review for national security and cybersecurity risks. The Trump administration requested OpenAI to pause the wide release of its newest model last month following an AI-related executive order calling for a federal review of up to 30 days.
In charge of the newly merged SpaceXAI, Musk announced the launch of his company’s new Grok model on Wednesday. Grok 4.5 marks SpaceXAI’s first release since going public and acquiring AI coding startup Cursor.
SPACEX LAUNCHES GROK 4.5 ON SAME DAY OPENAI ROLLS OUT NEW MODEL
Even with his company’s new model, Musk believes Anthropic is ahead of the curve with Mythos and Fable. Artificial Analysis, a service that provides independent analysis of AI models, says Grok 4.5 is the “top non-Anthropic model” while three different Anthropic models remain at the top of the list.
SpaceX merged with xAI earlier this year, but the company didn’t officially rebrand itself as SpaceXAI until this week. The aerospace company completed its historic initial public offering last month, thereby exceeding $2 trillion in market capitalization and briefly making Musk the world’s first trillionaire. His total net worth is nearly $952 billion now, according to Forbes.
