Elon Musk admits he was wrong: Anthropic is leading the AI race

Signals Inbox·July 11, 2026·Horizontal AI

One of the industry’s loudest and most combative founders is publicly conceding that a direct rival has built better models than everyone else.

Q1What is the official source?

The source is Elon Musk’s own post on X. He says he was clearly wrong about Anthropic, calls it the current AI leader, and says no company has released a model as good as Mythos or Fable.

Q2Why is Musk admitting he was wrong such a big deal?

Because Musk rarely talks about AI rivals like a neutral observer. He has spent years publicly fighting OpenAI and criticizing competing labs. As recently as February 2026, he described Anthropic’s models as misanthropic and evil. Five months later, he is calling the same company the clear leader.

Q3What exactly changed his mind?

The models appear to have become too strong to dismiss. Anthropic launched Fable 5 in June as its first publicly available Mythos-class model. The company says it can handle longer autonomous tasks across coding, research, vision, memory, and scientific work. Musk is effectively saying that Anthropic has moved ahead at the capability layer, even if his own company remains a competitor.

Q4Does this mean xAI has fallen behind?

According to Musk’s own wording, yes, at least for now. Saying no company has released a model as good as Anthropic’s necessarily includes his own company. That does not mean xAI is finished, obviously.