X is looking to expand the reach of its Grok chatbot, by partnering with messaging app Telegram on a new integration.
So now, if you’re subscribed to both Telegram Premium and X Premium, you’ll be able to chat with xAI’s Grok AI chatbot within your Telegram streams, providing another way to get answers from Elon’s “non-woke” AI chatbot.
Which X Corp is investing heavily into.
In December last year, xAI announced that it had raised an additional $6 billion in Series C funding, taking its valuation to $18 billion. Elon’s AI project has rapidly scaled up its capacity, with its huge “Colossus” AI data center in Memphis now housing around 200k Nvidia H100 units.
That puts it in competition with other AI projects on capacity, and X has also added in a range of ways for all X users to engage with its AI chatbot within the app.
And now, you can use it outside the platform as well.
Partnering with Russian-founded Telegram is an interesting choice, though Telegram has become popular with right-wing pundits, following their ejection from mainstream social apps.
So it does seemingly align with X’s core user base, and it’ll be interesting to see how Grok functions in another app.
But it doesn’t do much to counter allegations that Trump and Musk are more sympathetic to Russia, and the Russian government’s agenda.
To be fair, Telegram is based in Dubai, with its founders exiting Russia several years back.
And again, given the audience crossover, it could be a good way to get more people engaging with X’s AI tool, as it looks to convert Grok into a money-maker for the platform.
It’s not entirely clear how much interest Grok is generating, as X hasn’t shared a lot of usage insight. But with X users now also able to ask Grok questions within a post stream, it does seem like more users are referring the bot more often.
UPDATE: Telegram says that it has never been physically or legally connected to Russia, and was created specifically to protect users from Russian surveillance. Therefore, there’s no linkage between this integration and political interests.