xAI’s Grok Imagine Surpasses Sora, Veo in AI Video Tests

Las Vegas, Nevada – February 5, 2026 – xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, has achieved a major milestone with its Grok Imagine video generation tool, claiming the top position on multiple prominent AI leaderboards for video creation. Unveiled in early February, Grok Imagine has rapidly climbed rankings, outperforming established competitors like Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora in user-voted blind tests.

According to recent updates from Design Arena’s Video Arena leaderboard, Grok Imagine secured the number one spot with an Elo rating of approximately 1348-1351 (based on real-user pairwise comparisons), marking it as a standout performer in text-to-video and image-to-video categories. On Arena.ai’s Image-to-Video leaderboard (last updated February 4, 2026), variants of Grok Imagine — including the 720p model — hold the top ranks with Elo scores reaching 1397 (preliminary, ±12 confidence interval) after thousands of votes.

Artificial Analysis rankings also reflect strong performance, with Grok Imagine debuting at No. 1 in both text-to-video and image-to-video evaluations upon the release of its public API. The model excels in speed, quality, and cost-efficiency, generating high-resolution outputs with native synchronized audio — a feature that has driven massive adoption.

xAI reports that Grok Imagine has produced an astonishing 1.245 billion videos in the past 30 days alone, all at 720p resolution with integrated audio. Priced at just $4.20 per minute via the API, it undercuts many rivals while delivering competitive or superior results in motion realism, prompt adherence, and audio expressiveness. The latest Grok Imagine 1.0 update enables 10-second clips (extendable in some workflows), improved lip-sync, emotional voice acting, and advanced editing capabilities like follow-up refinements.

Elon Musk celebrated the achievement with a succinct post on X: “Grok Imagine rank 1.” The xAI team has teased further enhancements, including longer video durations and accelerated hiring to scale development.

Grok Imagine integrates seamlessly with the Grok platform (accessible via the Grok app or web), allowing users to generate cinematic videos from text prompts, reference images, or combinations of both. It supports multiple creative styles — from realistic to fantasy and sci-fi — and emphasizes fast generation times, making it appealing to content creators, marketers, and developers building AI-powered workflows.

This surge comes amid intense competition in the AI video space, where models like Google’s Veo 3 series and OpenAI’s Sora have long dominated headlines. Grok Imagine’s rapid rise highlights xAI’s focus on accessible, high-performance tools with fewer restrictions compared to some peers, though it has sparked discussions around content moderation and safety in generative media.

Industry observers note that while leaderboards provide valuable benchmarks, real-world use cases — such as short-form social content, marketing videos, and narrative storytelling — will ultimately determine long-term impact. xAI continues to expand API access and model capabilities through its developer documentation.

ClickUSANews.com will monitor further leaderboard shifts, user feedback, and any upcoming announcements from xAI as the AI video generation landscape evolves rapidly.

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