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

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

#291

Post by colordrops »

dotcoma wrote: post #274
serial_dev wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry, I don’t think this is on Musk or xAI. IMO it is on Telegram. Only Telegram has the obligation to know what their users want and look out for their own users. It’s not unreasonable for Grok to want to have more users.

Maybe not. But how much are they going to make by spending these 300 million USD ?

Are you claiming it's a stupid business decision, or something else? Because they must be thinking that there is a profit to be made somewhere, either through training data or brand exposure to Telegram's 1 billion users.

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

#292

Post by bobxmax »

dragonwriter wrote: post #151
bobxmax wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen multiple companies in the last twelve months blast past any past benchmark of fastest growing company ever. It's become pedestrian for some of these companies to scale to $10m ARR in a quarter which has never happened before. "Genuine user interest doesn't come close to justifying their insane valuations" - classic HN copium

> We've seen multiple companies in the last twelve months blast past any past benchmark of fastest growing company ever. So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999

No, dot com companies were famous for soaring valuations that WEREN'T revenue generating. Learn your history.

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

#293

Post by prettyblocks »

Hoasi wrote: post #212
Suppafly wrote: post #171

If this is something their users actually wanted, they'd be paying xAI, not the other way around.

Exactly, but what users want is not part of this equation.

As a Telegram user, I don't mind having an interface to Grok that is outside of X.

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

#294

Post by bearjaws »

z3dd wrote: post #125
game_the0ry wrote: post #103

Call me stupid, but I fundamentally do not grasp why xAI would pay Telegram for access to its users. $300M seems like a crazy amount of money to put into a chat app. I am genuinely curious about the business strategy behind the move bc that would be a market worth exploring - having something that the AI industry would pay for bc they are willing to spend a lot right now.

oh, cause telegram is not a chat app, it's Facebook of eastern Europe

Used pretty heavily by island nations and LATAM.

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

#295

Post by throwanem »

nikanj wrote: post #232
hintymad wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe xAI has some interesting way to make money in other places, like Google paying Mozilla for making Google search the default choice.

Google is paying Mozilla to keep Firefox on life support - so that they can pretend Chrome has competitors

Is or was? They just lost that suit, didn't they?

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

#296

Post by abletonlive »

ascorbic wrote: post #197
abletonlive wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By number of fully EV sold each quarter. Take out hybrids from the metric because Tesla does not make hybrids

Don't underestimate how far they've fallen. Tesla is nowhere near the top in Europe anymore. VW sold three times as many EVs as Tesla, with BYD in second place. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-just-got-overtaken-euro...

This is wrong and I would encourage you to check your sources or look into the industry more before posting a blind yahoo article that was clearly written by AI.

VW did not sell three times as many EVs as Tesla. https://www.carscoops.com/2025/04/vw-finally-beats-tesla-out...

In many of the comparisons, they try to make it more dramatic than it really is by saying volkswagen as an entire brand sold X more than tesla. Well of course they did, they sell hybrids and ICE vehicles too.

> Tesla is nowhere near the top in Europe anymore.

This is factually incorrect. They are #2 overall BEV sales in europe for Q1 2025 and also own #1 and #2 spots for best selling BEV models.

I would expect such a low quality comment from reddit, not HN, but alas here we are in 2025.

And additional reminder for folks that have an axe to grind that perhaps clouds their judgement of reality: when you've dominated the BEV market for almost 10 years, going sideways and down in marketshare is pretty much the only option.

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

#297

Post by psychoslave »

machomaster wrote: post #211
sorokod wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telegram also has a large amount of users in countries with heavy censorship and surveillance That citizens of those countries are allowed to use Telegram says something about the privacy it affords to them.

You don't know what you are talking about. Read on the multi-year attempts of Putin trying to ban Telegram and Telegram fighting back (technologically and also politically - demonstrations, etc). Telegram won the battle and Putin had no choice but to admit defeat. Similar things happened in other non-free coutries as well.

>Telegram won the battle and Putin had no choice but to admit defeat.

That just seems such a unreal claim. Telegram removed features like "people nearby" after its CEO was arrested in France. Who seriously believe that the kind of threats France establishment would employ on such a person could dwarf those of Russia establishment in term of bending the braves?

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

#298

Post by edent »

rchaud wrote: post #272
nickpsecurity wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that. Then, I remembered PayPal straight up paying people to use their platform. We saw how that worked out. So, the question is whether they should pay to generate demand in a new market. Then, who to pay and how much? I'll also note that OpenAI took the market by offering an expensive service for free (ChatGPT). Then, they offered a monthly plan that may or may not have been profitable. One could argue th…

When was PayPal doing that? I remember having to create an account 20 years ago because they were the only payment processor option on Ebay, that seemed to be their moat. These days, I use Paypal as a "wallet" that's connected to my CC, to pay for stuff on sites where I don't want to put in my CC information.

PayPal still regularly send out offers which pay new users.

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/invite/terms

It is a common way for businesses to acquire customers.

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

#299

Post by bigfatkitten »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #254
machomaster wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what you are talking about. Read on the multi-year attempts of Putin trying to ban Telegram and Telegram fighting back (technologically and also politically - demonstrations, etc). Telegram won the battle and Putin had no choice but to admit defeat. Similar things happened in other non-free coutries as well.

I'll warn that the FBI was publicly trying to get warrants for information while they and NSA were siphoning it off in secret from the same companies. One was likely a cover for the other. Unless there's legal protections, assume in your threat model any company has let their host government, maybe others, backdoor their offerings. It might have been willingly or forced. Police states like U.S. and Russia should be a…

> I'll warn that the FBI was publicly trying to get warrants for information while they and NSA were siphoning it off in secret from the same companies. One was likely a cover for the other

That’s a wildly ignorant take, but it makes for a nice conspiracy theory if you make no effort at all to understand the legalities.

Different warrants authorise the collection and use of information for different purposes. FAA 702 warrants only authorise targeting non U.S. persons outside the United States for foreign intelligence purposes, where there is probable cause to believe the U.S. person is a foreign power or is an officer, employee, or agent of a foreign power.

The FBI has criminal investigation and counterterrorism functions which relate to persons in the U.S. and/or where there is no connection to a foreign power. They obviously need different warrants to authorize those activities.

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

#300

Post by h2782 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #228
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #61

the good news is that when this doesn't yield any positive results for xAI and they need a bailout then they'll get bought by Tesla, and Elon is saved once again.

Given Tesla’s current prospects it seems more likely that xAI or SpaceX wind up bailing it out.

This is a self-comforting argument I keep seeing all over against Tesla. Yet, their refreshed models are showing up on roads very quickly.

Demand for Tesla isn't permanently going anywhere just to make a few new Elon haters happy. I also don't like Musk, but I am not deluding myself like so many these days that Tesla is dead. Elon is much like a roach; he will survive nuclear Armageddon.

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