AI Model Release Tracker - Timeline of Major AI Models from 2022-2026

Kimi K2.6 vs Grok 4 Heavy

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2.6
SpaceXAI
Grok 4 Heavy
Overview
CompanyMoonshot AISpaceXAI
Release dateApr 21 2026Jul 9 2025
AccessOpen WeightProprietary
Specifications
Parameters
1T
Context window
256k
Benchmarks
Nonsense detection
BullshitBench v2
65%
Coding
SWE-Bench Verified
80.2%
Agentic coding
CursorBench v3.1
47.6%
Next.js coding
Next.js Evals
67%
Competitive coding
LiveCodeBench
89.6%
Science
GPQA Diamond
90.5%
Community preference (code)
Arena Elo (Code)
1513
Timeline
Release gapGrok 4 Heavy shipped 286 days before Kimi K2.6

Which is better: Kimi K2.6 or Grok 4 Heavy?

Kimi K2.6 and Grok 4 Heavy don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks, so there's no direct head-to-head comparison. Grok 4 Heavy shipped 286 days before Kimi K2.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Kimi K2.6 is open weight, while Grok 4 Heavy is proprietary.

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — Kimi K2.6 and Grok 4 Heavy don't publish scores on any of the same benchmarks.

Frequently asked questions

Kimi K2.6 was released by Moonshot AI on Apr 21 2026.

Grok 4 Heavy was released by SpaceXAI on Jul 9 2025.

Kimi K2.6 is an open weight model released by Moonshot AI. Grok 4 Heavy is a proprietary model released by SpaceXAI.

Other comparisons