Elon Musk, Sam Altman congratulate Google on Gemini 3 launch, but Musk teases: “Guess, we will have to…”

Elon Musk offered public praise to Google CEO Sundar Pichai following the launch of Gemini 3, but quickly pivoted to hint at his own AI countermove. The xAI chief responded “Congrats” to Pichai’s enthusiastic “Geminiii” announcement on X, and multiple “Nice Work” messages to Demis Hassabis, the chief of DeepMind, and others. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also joined the chorus of congratulations, posting “Congrats to Google on Gemini 3! Looks like a great model.”

Musk’s praise, however, came with a competitive edge. In a reply to another post from LMArena, which showed Gemini 3 Pro topping the benchmarks that xAI’s Grok 4.1 Thinking had held briefly, he added: “Congrats indeed! I guess we will have to release 4.20 soon.”