Grok 4's training run is estimated at about $490 million and 310 million kWh. These figures show the cost and energy scale of frontier training that shapes future model availability and pricing.
Key takeaways · AI-distilled
Epoch's estimate starts from about 246 million H100-hours, inferred from Grok-3's known training resources plus assumptions about how far xAI scaled up for Grok 4, not from figures xAI disclosed.
The 310 GWh energy figure multiplies 700 W per H100 SXM by 2.03x for non-GPU hardware such as switches, 1.2x for data-center PUE, and an average draw of about three-quarters of peak.
One of Epoch's two cost methods prices the H100-hours at rental rates sampled with a 90% interval of $1.90 to $2.20 per hour; the headline estimate is about $490 million.
The estimates exclude human labor and the compute for experiments and serving Grok 4, which Epoch says can be very significant. The page gives cooling water as both 750 million and 1.2 billion liters.
