Telegram Partners With xAI in a $300 Million Deal

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made a significant move with his AI venture, xAI, by securing a $300 million investment from Telegram's messaging platform. This partnership will allow for the integration of xAI's chatbot, Grok, into Telegram’s ecosystem, which could strengthen xAI’s position in the rapidly changing AI ecosystem.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the collaboration on the social media platform X, saying the two companies have agreed on a one-year partnership. The partnership will introduce xAI’s Grok to Telegram’s billion+ users and integrate across all apps.

Telegram will receive $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, along with 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions bought via Telegram. 

🔥 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 🤝

💪 This also strengthens Telegram’s financial… pic.twitter.com/ZPK550AyRV

— Pavel Durov (@durov) May 28, 2025

As reported by Reuters, AI companies are encountering growing difficulties in obtaining quality data due to the depletion of many open-source repositories. This is pushing firms like Meta to leverage public interactions with AI to train their models. 

The recent partnership with Telegram could offer xAI a new source of user engagement that might be beneficial for improving its AI systems. Although X, the social media platform also owned by Musk, utilises public posts to train its AI models, it is still uncertain if a similar method will be applied to Telegram data, according to Mint.

Musk called Grok 3 the smallest AI on earth and announced its release in February 2025. AIM reported previously that it was trained on 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs and boasts almost ten times more computing power than its predecessor. 

Along with the launch of Grok 3, xAI had been negotiating to secure $10 billion in financing. Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Valor Equity Partners will be involved in this funding round, elevating xAI's valuation to $75 billion.