Side-by-side comparison of Grok-2 (xAI · USA) and Kimi K2 Instruct (Moonshot AI · China) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. Grok-2 is rated conditional; Kimi K2 Instruct is conditional. They part ways on licence: Grok-2 is "Grok 2 Community", Kimi K2 Instruct is "Modified MIT".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional xAI's first open-weights release. Commercial use allowed under the Grok 2 Community License with xAI's Acceptable Use Policy. Notable restriction: weights cannot be used to train other models (distillation ban). 500GB model, needs 8 GPUs with 40GB+. | Conditional 1T-parameter MoE (32B active) tuned for agentic and tool-use workflows. Modified MIT permits commercial use. Same Chinese-origin alignment and supply-chain considerations as DeepSeek and Qwen. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-16 | 2026-04-16 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Grok 2 Community | Modified MIT |
| Commercial use | Yes (w/ AUP) | Yes |
| Training data | Undisclosed | Undisclosed |
| Origin | USA | China |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | 14/100 | 26/100 |
| Speed | — | 34 tok/s |
| Blended price | — | $1.04/M |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.