xAI is expanding its Grok chatbot beyond the X platform, with messaging app Telegram signing on to host Grok within Telegram chats.
As announced by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, Telegram and xAI have agreed to a 1-year partnership to distribute Grok via the messaging app, which will make Grok availavle to Telegram’s billion-plus users.
As per Durov:
“This Summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market. Elon Musk and I have agreed to a 1-year partnership to bring xAI’s Grok to our billion+ users, and integrate it across all Telegram apps.”
Grok on Telegram will be pinned to the top of the user chat interface, so users can ask questions of the AI bot at any time.
Grok on Telegram will also be available in search, while you’ll also be able to consult Grok via the composer (to polish your DMs), get summaries of any chat, summarize attached documents and links, use Grok as a moderator in group chats, and more.
Businesses will even be able to use Grok to help them manage their discussions in the app.
You’ll also be able to prompt Grok to generate stickers and avatar images for you.
So Telegram users will be able to access a good range of Grok functionalities, which will expand the potential usage of Grok to a huge new audience.
And xAI is paying for that privilege.
According to Durov, Telegram will receive $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, along with 50% of any revenue generated via xAI subscriptions sold through Telegram.
Which, given the expanded reach potential, seems like a fair deal, though I’m still not 100% clear on why xAI is being valued at $120 billion when there’s no clear path to significant monetization as yet.
xAI has already raised over $12 billion in funding to power its development, which it’s used to create its massive Colossus data center, and acquire the X platform as a subsidiary. The broader hype around AI, and the mythos of Elon Musk, seems to be driving investor interest in the project, however xAI doesn’t have the resources of bigger players in the AI race, while its commercial offerings seem marginally valuable, when looking at advanced Grok access for consumers, or developer access to its Grok models.
Will people really pay for Grok when they can access AI tools from OpenAI or Meta instead?
Of course, the appeal of Grok in this sense is that the models are “less woke,” with Elon looking to pitch Grok as a more truthful AI because it’s unencumbered by speech restrictions like these other tools.
Though that’s also led to various challenges for Grok, with a recent report showing that 25% of organizations in Europe, for example, have now blocked access to Grok, due to privacy concerns, data protection failures, and recurring misinformation errors.
With this in mind, it does seem like xAI’s market opportunity is much smaller than other AI models, and that could become a more significant limitation as the AI shift expands.
Though in this respect, Telegram also has its own concerns.
Last year, Durov himself was arrested over the role that Telegram’s played in facilitating illegal activity, which led to Durov implementing significant changes to Telegram’s data-sharing policies with respect to criminal investigations.
Essentially, Telegram will now share user data with law enforcement for such, with Telegram data not being encrypted like other apps.
That variance in data privacy has prompted some to shift away from the app, and that could presumably also limit Telegram’s own market reach.
Still, it’s an important development for xAI, and its growing business push, which will get a lot more people interacting with its Grok bot.
For a year at least. It’ll also be interesting to see whether Telegram renews the partnership in future.