• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Elon Musk’s xAI is looking to expand its Grok chatbot beyond X, currently courting a 1-year partnership with social messaging service Telegram. 

According to a post made by Telegram founder Pavel Durov, Musk has agreed to bring Grok to Telegram’s one billion users and integrate the large language model across its family of apps. Durov also stated that Telegram will receive $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, “plus 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram.”

Later that day, however, Musk downplayed the agreement, stating that “no deal has yet been signed.”

Durov responded, saying that both parties had “agreed in principle” while “formalities are pending.”

Musk has yet to offer a counterpoint to Durov’s statement, supporting the assumption that a deal -- possibly the very deal Durov originally detailed to the public -- will soon be finalized. 

If so, Grok will be featured on the top of Telegram’s user chat interface, as well as in search, inviting users to ask the chatbot questions and receive answers in real-time.

In addition, Telegram users will be able to use Grok to help fine-tune their direct messages, receive summaries of chats, summarize documents and links attached within chats, utilize Grok as a moderator in group chats, and prompt the chatbot to create stickers and avatar images.

Brands will also be able to use Grok to help manage discussions with potential clients and customers directly in Telegram. 

When the assumed deal was originally posted by Durov on Wednesday, Telegram still had over $1 billion in bond debts.

The supposed $300 million and equity from xAI would likely have been used to pay off some of the company’s debt. 

However, on Thursday, news broke that Telegram has raised a $1.7 billion convertible bond to help restructure and postpone its existing debt.  

Therefore, xAI may be the more dependent party involved in the potential Grok expansion.

Within the highly competitive AI race, Grok is competing with comparable AI tools from other companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta and more.

In addition, xAI has branded Grok as a less “woke” chatbot alternative, stoking some organizations across the world to ban access to Grok entirely.