Hard Fork

Kevin Roose × Casey Newton × Vlad Tenev

Grok 3 is competitive and cheaper at $40 a month, but its X-data access has not yet created a clear product or research moat. xAI’s rapid, billion-dollar Colossus build shows capital and infrastructure can buy frontier capacity, while Robinhood’s tokenization and prediction-market expansion faces unresolved regulation and speculation risks.Robinhood, valued at $52.2 billion at recording, is pursuing tokenized private assets and prediction markets, with disclosure tiers and CFTC scrutiny testing whether access expands beyond speculation.