xAI reportedly used Claude models in training workflow

xAI reportedly used Claude models as part of its training and distillation workflow.

The wider point is that frontier AI competition is messy. Model companies can be rivals, customers, benchmarks, and indirect inputs all at the same time.

For the AI industry, this raises big questions around model provenance, licensing, and competitive boundaries. The stack may look clean from the outside, but behind the curtain it is more spaghetti than spreadsheet.