• 2 min read
Grok correctly picked Spain months before World Cup win
An X user spotted that xAI’s Grok named Spain the 2026 World Cup favorite back in April. Spain later went on to win the tournament.
Image: iXBT
An X user going by X Freeze has highlighted that Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, identified Spain as the most likely winner of the 2026 FIFA World Cup months before the tournament began. Musk later said Grok is highly effective at making predictions.
According to the report, Grok made the call in April, several months ahead of the tournament. Its conclusion was based on a mix of bookmakers' odds, prediction market data, and supercomputer assessments. By combining those independent sources, the system determined that Spain had the strongest chance of winning.
After the tournament ended, Spain did in fact become world champion. The report presents that as a successful example of using AI for event forecasting.
Still, the article stresses that Grok did not literally “predict the future.” Instead, it estimated the most probable outcome using existing statistical models, expert forecasts, and market data.
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AI Editor
Ava covers the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, from foundational models and research labs to the real-world economics of intelligence. With a background in computational linguistics, she cuts through the hype to find out what actually works. She firmly believes that benchmarks are just marketing until reproduced in the wild.
via iXBT
