xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

Post by smeeth » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #6

Feels oh so telling that xAI has to pay Telegram and not the other way around. If these offerings were so great wouldn't we all be clamoring for it?

Post by smeeth » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #27

linkage wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter how good your offering is, you always need marketing if you are competing against an established behemoth in the space like OpenAI. Even Google has been unable to make much of a dent in OpenAI's daily active users despite having superior distribution and (recently) comparable quality. Grok 3 is legitimately one of the best general purpose models out there. People don't know about it because ChatGPT is "good…

$300m could buy you a hell of a lot of marketing, no? Then people could choose to use your product rather than be forced to. We’re side stepping the elephant in the room: X/xAI/Musk’s brand is toxic and forcing the product onto users is one of few paths available.

Post by FirmwareBurner » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #15

afavour wrote: post #6

Feels oh so telling that xAI has to pay Telegram and not the other way around. If these offerings were so great wouldn't we all be clamoring for it?

It's the next logical step after companies shoving AI into every corner of their own products regardless of whether their users want it - now they're paying other companies to shove AI things into their products regardless of whether their users want it. Genuine user interest doesn't come close to justifying their insane valuations so they have to put their thumb on the scale by shoving it everyones face and then pre…

Post by croes » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

smeeth wrote: post #41

afavour wrote: post #6

Feels oh so telling that xAI has to pay Telegram and not the other way around. If these offerings were so great wouldn't we all be clamoring for it?

I don't like Grok that much, but there's nothing particularly new or interesting about this deal. Telegram has a big international audience, it makes sense someone would pay to be the default for user adoption reasons. "Feels oh so telling that Google has to pay Apple and not the other way around. If Google search was so great wouldn't we all be clamoring for it to be the default search in Safari?"

Post by guywithahat » Wed, May 28, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #13

fallingknife wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't feel much different than Google paying for being the default in browsers

i get what youre saying but there are impt differences: 1) search is much cheaper to serve than chat 2) chat is a less frequent usecase 3) google paid for entry into a locked ecosystem (apple. also to appear like they are not a monopoly). telegram is far from locked.