Telegram announces partnership with Elon Musk’s AI business

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said early Wednesday that he had agreed to a one-year deal with Elon Musk’s xAI to distribute its Grok chatbot to the platform’s billion-plus users.

Hours later, Musk fired back, saying that “no deal has been signed.”

According to Durov, his messaging app will receive $300 million (R5.4 billion) in cash and equity from xAI.

The firm would also be entitled to 50% of revenue from subscriptions to the artificial intelligence chatbot sold via Telegram, Durov said in a post on X Wednesday.

After Musk said in his own X post that a deal hadn’t been signed, the Telegram founder acknowledged that the agreement was “in principle” and “formalities are pending.”

Telegram has drawn the ire of authorities from the European Union to Iran over content shared on its platform and its unresponsiveness to takedown requests.

Durov is facing charges from French authorities, who claim he was complicit in allowing crimes to be committed on the app. He denies the charges. 

Telegram spokesperson Devon Spurgeon said by email that the company “has always processed all legitimate requests to remove content that breaches our terms of services.” 

Grok meanwhile has been called out before for questionable responses, including a brief period this month when it steered a series of unrelated social media posts into discussions about a conspiracy theory involving “white genocide” in South Africa.