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xAI unveils its first coding agent to rival Anthropic
15 May 2026

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, xAI, has launched its first-ever AI coding agent, Grok Build.

The move is part of a strategy to compete with other AI companies in the lucrative software development market.

Currently in early testing and available only for paying subscribers, this new model can handle complex coding tasks based on user commands.

Competing with Claude
Performance targets

Michael Nicolls, the president of xAI and an executive at Starlink, has urged his team to match the performance of Anthropic's Claude across tasks.

He has called this a "near-term goal."

This ambition highlights Musk's commitment to making xAI a strong player in the professional coding space, despite admitting that his company is currently lagging.

Partnership with Cursor
Company evolution

As part of its evolution, xAI has partnered with AI company Cursor for coding and computing resources.

The collaboration has already seen Cursor engineers working with the start-up in recent weeks.

However, despite these developments, some key engineers at xAI's Palo Alto office have recently left the company.

These include Devendra Chaplot, co-founder of Mistral AI, who joined in March, and Beibin Li, who previously headed post-training efforts at xAI.