In a significant move within the artificial intelligence sector, xAI, the company led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has announced a partnership agreement with the widely popular messaging application, Telegram.
Under this deal, xAI will pay $300 million to integrate its advanced chatbot, "Grok," into the Telegram platform, aiming to reach the app's massive user base of over a billion users and enhance its competitive capabilities.
Details of the Financial and Temporal Agreement
Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder and CEO, clarified in a Tuesday post that this partnership extends for one year.
Durov added that, under the agreement, Telegram will receive 50% of the subscription revenues for 'Grok' services generated through its platform.
The agreed-upon amount of $300 million will be paid by xAI in a mix of cash and equity.
"Grok" Accessible to Telegram Users
In a statement on his Telegram channel, Durov announced: "This summer, Telegram users will find the best AI technologies available on the market at their fingertips."
Notably, a trial version of "Grok" had previously been made available to users of the paid 'Telegram Premium' service, and current information suggests it may be offered to all app users in the near future.
According to a video posted by Durov, 'Grok' will be installable at the top of chat lists within the app.
🔥 This summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market. @elonmusk 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 🤝
— Pavel Durov (May 28, 2025)
💪 This also strengthens Telegram’s financial… pic.twitter.com/ZPK550AyRV
Users will also be able to direct questions to it directly via the search bar, a feature reminiscent of what Meta did when integrating its smart assistant into its applications.
Advanced Features and Diverse Functions
Grok will offer a suite of new capabilities to Telegram users.
These functions include providing smart writing suggestions, summarizing long text conversations, articles via links, and various documents.
Additionally, 'Grok' will assist in creating expressive stickers, offering support for business activities by answering customer inquiries, and contributing to moderation and content management within groups.
Strategic Dimensions for "xAI"
This partnership comes as a crucial strategic step for xAI to strengthen its position in the fiercely competitive global AI market.
Such a collaboration will likely grant the company access to a vast amount of data that could be valuable for training and developing its language models, a significant challenge faced by many AI companies seeking diverse and high-quality training data.
It's worth noting that the 'X' platform (formerly Twitter), acquired by xAI, already uses its users' public posts for training its intelligent models.
It remains unclear whether xAI will follow the same approach with Telegram user data.
Impact on Tech and Crypto Worlds
This move comes at a time when major technology companies are racing to integrate AI tools into their products and services offered to the public.
For instance, Meta recently integrated its smart assistant, 'Meta AI,' into the search bar of Instagram and WhatsApp.
In a notable related development, Toncoin (TON), the cryptocurrency chosen by Telegram as the exclusive payment method for in-app services, saw its value surge by over 20% within a few hours.
The surge followed the announcement of this partnership and other positive news related to Telegram, including reports of BlackRock's participation in a bond issuance for the platform.
