Speculation: Grok 4.8 is built for Grok Bot speed and cost
The author bets Grok 4.8 won't chase leaderboards but will power everyday Grok Bot requests fast and cheap, routing hard tasks to models like Opus 5.5.
Seeing Grok 4.7 this low is just sad… SpaceX needs Grok 4.8 now more than ever. but even Grok 4.8 won't top the leaderboard, Elon already said it won't match Astra or Fable. so what's 4.8 actually for? my bet is Grok Bot, since Elon said most Grok Bot requests will run on a lightning-fast version of 4.8 while hard tasks will get routed to models like Opus 5.5 if that's the plan, 4.8 doesn't need to be the smartest model in the world, it just needs to be insanely fast, cheap and good enough to power an everyday agent. and honestly that might be the smartest play considering how big Grok Bot has become.
This post quotes another post: “Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5: Claude Opus 5.5 leads, GPT-6 Astra second”