Elon Musk's chatbot Grok will appear on Telegram. What you need to know

Telegram founder Pavel Durov and American entrepreneur Elon Musk have agreed to cooperate for at least a year. xAI's Grok chatbot, which belongs to Musk, will be integrated into the messenger. As a result, Telegram will receive $300 million and 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions issued through the platform. How the work of Telegram will change and what functions will appear — in the Izvestia material.

The essence of cooperation

• Users will be able to ask the Grok neural network questions directly in the Telegram search bar and receive answers in real time. To do this, a separate Ask Grok icon will appear in the messenger, which will be located to the right of the search bar.

• You can also appoint a chatbot as a moderator of chats. At the same time, he will perform the functions of a fact checker, that is, to verify the accuracy of information. Another feature is the ability to create extracts from large messages and files, which makes it easier to work with voluminous content. In addition, the bot can analyze images, conduct scientific research and create games.

• Grok has several versions, the most recent is Grok 3. This chat analyzes a large amount of data. At the same time, Musk noted that all available information is used, even "politically incorrect" information. The Colossus gigacomputer with 200 thousand Nvidia H100 chips is used for the chat. Grok 3, according to experts, surpasses competitors by many criteria, and Musk himself called it "an AI aimed at finding the truth."

Transaction Details

• The deal is for at least one year. Telegram will receive $300 million from xAI and half of the revenue from subscriptions to the company's services issued inside the messenger.

• The Grok neural network has already been implemented in the work of the social network X, which belongs to Musk, since 2023. The Grok chatbot functionality appeared in Telegram in March 2025. However, now it can only be used by users with a premium subscription.

• This partnership will open up new opportunities for monetization and development of both companies. According to the FT, in 2024 Telegram's profit has already reached about $540 million, and the number of active users has exceeded 1 billion people. Such high rates are associated with an increase in the number of paid subscribers and the volume of cryptocurrency assets. At the same time, Musk created the startup in the field of artificial intelligence xAI in 2023, and just a year later, in December 2024, the company was valued at more than $ 40 billion.

Similarity of positions

• The positions of Durov and Mask agree on some issues. So, in May, Durov said that before the second round of the presidential elections in Romania, one of the Western European governments asked him to limit the activity of local conservative forces in Telegram. However, he stressed that he had not agreed to this. He later clarified that the request came from Nicolas Lerner, director of French Foreign Intelligence (DGSE). The French Foreign Ministry soon called Durov's statement a fake.

• Musk soon expressed his support for Durov's decision. In his social network X, he wrote with the exclamation Hear, hear! (it can be translated as "True, true!", the literal translation is "Hear, hear!"). However, Musk has previously become famous for his categorical statements in the field of combating censorship on the Internet.

The problems of entrepreneurs

• There are many scandals around Durov and Mask. So, the Reuters news agency, citing sources, reported that employees of the Department for Improving the efficiency of the US government (DOGE), which was headed by Musk, use the Grok chatbot to analyze data in the structures of the US federal government. This creates a conflict of interest and endangers the personal information of U.S. citizens.

• In turn, Durov is under investigation in France. He is accused of insufficient content moderation in Telegram, as well as refusing to cooperate with the authorities. In August 2024, he was detained at Le Bourget airport in Paris and placed under arrest. He managed to get out on bail of € 5 million, but the entrepreneur is not free to leave France. He needs to get a permit to travel to other countries. Durov holds Russian and French passports, citizenship of the United Arab Emirates, as well as Saint Kitts and Nevis.

When writing the material, Izvestia interviewed:

• Denis Kuskov, head of the information and analytical agency Telecom Daily.