xAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm founded by Elon Musk on Monday launched an API for Grok. While the API was launched last month, the company has now offered several incentives to developers to try out the API and build apps and software using it. The most notable incentive on offer is a free credit of $25 (roughly Rs. 2,100) per month until the end of the year. The API key can be generated using the xAI console and users can further customize the way they use it.
xAI offers Grok API with free credits
Three weeks ago, Musk made a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) reporting that the Grok API was live. However, it appears that it did not get much support from the developer community as the official handle of xAI on the social media platform separately announced the launch of several free features along with the API to attract the attention of developers.
For starters, any developer who signs up to the xAI Console will receive $25 worth of free credits every month. Given that there are two months left until the end of 2024, developers can receive a maximum of $50 (approximately Rs 4,200) in API credits.
But not only this. xAI is also rewarding any developer who has purchased prepaid credits for the API so far. In a blog post, the company said that any developers with purchased prepaid credits will receive an equivalent amount of free monthly credits for every month until the end of the year.
This means that if a developer purchased a $50 prepaid credit, they will receive $50 + $25 total free credit in both November and December. Given that the xAI API costs $5 (roughly Rs. 420) per million input tokens and $15 (roughly Rs. 1261) per million output tokens, this is a significant reward for those willing to use the API.
The move also highlights AI firms’ ongoing race to attract the attention of the developer community. Since widespread adoption of AI models is dependent on various apps and software running large language models, developers have become an important entity for both ecosystem players as well as technology providers.
Apart from monetary incentives, xAI also highlighted that the company has made its REST API compatible with APIs offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. For example, a developer using the OpenAI Python SDK can change the base_url to https://api.x.ai/v1 and start building on the xAI API. The move also highlights the company’s intention to reduce friction during migration from one system to another.
