Evidence shows that Elon Musk’s xAI did in fact open‑source the Grok model in a way that broadly matches Chamath’s prediction.

1. Grok‑1 open‑sourced (Apache 2.0)
   In March 2024, xAI released the base model weights and network architecture of Grok‑1 on GitHub. TechCrunch reports that xAI "open sourced the base model of Grok" and that it is a 314B-parameter Mixture‑of‑Experts model. The release is under the Apache 2.0 license, which is a permissive open‑source license that allows commercial use and redistribution. (techcrunch.com)
   This makes Grok‑1 freely downloadable and usable by developers, which matches the spirit of "allow people to have access to these tools, basically for free."

2. Later Grok versions also opened, though with more restrictions
   In August 2025, Musk announced that Grok 2.5 was made "open source" and released its model weights on Hugging Face. Multiple reports confirm that the weights for Grok 2.5 were published, with Musk stating on X that “The @xAI Grok 2.5 model … is now open source,” and promising Grok 3 would follow. (techcrunch.com)
   However, unlike Grok‑1’s Apache license, Grok 2.5 uses a custom, more restrictive non‑commercial/community license, meaning it is not as fully permissive as classic open source. (beebom.com)

3. Assessment vs prediction
   Chamath’s forecast was that Musk would open‑source Grok so that people could access and use it essentially for free. By March 2024—well after the November 2023 podcast—xAI did release Grok‑1’s weights and architecture under a standard open‑source license, and later released Grok 2.5 weights as well. These moves provided broad, no‑cost access for developers, notwithstanding some licensing nuances for newer versions.

Given that:

• Grok‑1 was released with full model weights and architecture under Apache 2.0 (widely accepted as open source), and
• This enabled broad, free developer use,

the core prediction that Elon would open‑source Grok and make it freely accessible to developers is fulfilled in substance.