Telegram, Musk-owned xAI partner to distribute Grok to messaging app's users

Elon Musk's AI start-up xAI will pay Telegram $300 million to deploy its Grok chatbot on the messaging app, aiming to tap the platform's more than one billion users and sharpen its competitive edge in the booming artificial intelligence market.

Under the one-year deal, xAI will also give Telegram half of any subscription sales made through the messaging app, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in a Wednesday post on X, adding that the $300 million will be paid in cash and stock.

The deal could provide xAI, which acquired X earlier this year in a deal that values the social media platform at $33 billion, with valuable data to train and develop its AI models.

With many open-source repositories exhausted, AI companies face increasing challenges in sourcing quality data, pushing firms like Meta Platforms to utilize public interactions with AI for model training.

According to its privacy policy, X uses public posts
from users to train its AI models. It was not immediately clear
if xAI would utilize data from Telegram similarly.

The companies did not respond to requests for comment.

XAI has signed several tie-ups this year to bolster its
position in both AI infrastructure and financial services.