Telegram founder announced Grok coming to chat app, Elon Musk replied deal not yet signed
Telegram could become the latest platform to host Grok, which is xAI's artificial intelligence chatbot. Grok is also integrated into X. Grok on Telegram would be interesting but there seems to be some confusion around the deal's (between X and Telegram) final status. On Wednesday, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov announced in a post on X that Grok will soon be available on Telegram. Durox said that xAI has agreed to pay Telegram $300 million in cash and stock as part of a one-year relationship. Along with this, Telegram will also be receiving 50 per cent of the revenue from xAI subscriptions that are sold via Telegram. advertisement'We will receive $300M in cash and equity from xAI, plus 50 per cent of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram,' Durov wrote in a post on X. However, just hours after Durov put up the post, Musk responded to it saying, 'No deal has been signed.' This prompted Durov to clarify that while both parties had agreed 'in principle,' some formalities were still pending.
Durov says that when Telegram users do get access to Grok on the platform, the AI chatbot will only be able to access data that users explicitly choose to share in their interactions with the chatbot. He said that privacy will remain a top priority. 'User privacy is paramount,' he said. 'To be clear, xAI will only access data that Telegram users explicitly share with Grok through direct interactions. That's expected — you can't message anyone (including a chatbot) without sharing what you write,' he added. advertisement
In a separate post, Durov also said that any AI tool integrated into Telegram would respect the platform's long-standing privacy policies. 'Users deserve secure, fast and private messaging — and any AI feature we add must honour that.'
The brief exchange between Durov and Musk does lead to suspicion that there is a possibility that the deal might fall through. We really can't say until there is official confirmation on this. The news is only partly official right now. According to a report by Reuters, the agreement, if it goes through, could be a strategic win for xAI, which has been aggressively expanding its reach in the competitive AI space. Telegram, with its massive user base of over one billion, could provide xAI with access to a vast audience and valuable user interactions to help train its AI models. Telegram Premium alone has over 15 million paid subscribers, according to data shared by Durov. Tech companies like Meta, Perplexity and xAI are increasingly looking for new data sources as open-source repositories become scarce. Perplexity recently rolled out the Perplexity AI chatbot on WhatsApp. Perplexity is reportedly also working on its own AI search browser called Comet, which the company's CEO Aravind Srinivas says could help it gather more data on its users.
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