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Term · Checked November 4, 2026

Large language model (LLM)

An AI model trained on huge amounts of text to predict the next word, which lets it answer questions, write and code. Grok is a family of LLMs.

Source: xAI documentation

AI basics

Why it matters

Almost every AI assistant in the news, Grok included, is built on a large language model. Knowing that it predicts text, one word at a time, explains both what it is good at (writing, summing up, coding) and why it can state wrong things with confidence.

When a company announces a new model, it is usually a new LLM: trained on more data, with more computing power, or with new training methods. That is why model news and compute news, such as new data centers, so often arrive together.

Related terms

Token
A chunk of text, often part of a word, that models read and write. API prices are quoted per million tokens.
Context window
How much text a model can consider at once, measured in tokens.
Parameters
The adjustable numbers inside a model that training sets; a rough measure of the model's size.
All explained