Grok and Telegram: How Elon Musk and Pavel Durov Parted Ways Before They Started

Remember that day in May last year, when news feeds erupted with headlines about an alliance between two of the industry's most headstrong titans? Pavel Durov officially confirmed that Telegram had struck a partnership with Elon Musk's xAI. The plan sounded ambitious: build the brash, politically incorrect Grok straight into the messenger's interface.

It looked like a perfect match. On one side stood Telegram, with its enormous audience and reputation as a bastion of free speech; on the other, Grok, which promised to answer the questions that make censored models from Google and OpenAI "break." But a year has passed, and the app has not shown even a hint of Musk's AI.

The silence has dragged on so long that it is obvious something went wrong.

An investigation by colleagues at "Durov's Code" confirms the worst fears of the optimists: the project is effectively dead. Why now, when the AI arms race has reached its peak? To understand, look at how the landscape has changed over the past twelve months. In May 2023, Grok looked like a powerful trump card that could instantly turn Telegram into a super-app. Since then, however, Elon Musk has turned xAI into a closed ecosystem tied as tightly as possible to his own platform, X (formerly Twitter). Making Grok available in Telegram would have meant handing a competitor a powerful tool for retaining users, and Musk is not one to practice charity at the expense of his own assets.

The technical side raises plenty of questions too. Integrating a third-party LLM of this scale requires not only enormous computing power but also a clear answer to who pays for the tokens. Given Grok's appetite and the number of active Telegram users, API bills could blow a hole even in Durov's budget. Besides, Pavel has always been obsessive about protecting his platform's independence. Letting Grok under the messenger's hood would have given xAI access to certain patterns of user behavior, and Durov is unlikely to have agreed to that even for the sake of friendship with Elon.

External pressure should not be forgotten either. Apple and Google are wary of unmoderated AI content. If Grok in its X version still manages to get through the app stores' filters, its appearance in Telegram could have provoked a new wave of complaints from the censors in Cupertino. Durov, who already regularly fights for the messenger's right to exist in the App Store, certainly does not need extra trouble over the "wrong" answers of a neural network right now. It is simpler and safer to develop in-house, more controllable solutions.

So where does that leave us? Telegram has gone its own way. We are already seeing audio message transcription, AI tools for business accounts, and an updated search that, by rumor, will soon get its own "smart" algorithms. Pavel Durov, as usual, has decided to build his fortress alone, without relying on the shifting moods of partners, even when those partners launch rockets into space. Elon Musk, for his part, has focused on turning X into an "everything app" in which Grok plays the central role. The roads have diverged, and hopes of a united front against Silicon Valley corporations have finally melted away.

Bottom line: Telegram will have to catch up with Meta and WhatsApp in AI on its own, which may slow the rollout of truly groundbreaking features. Will the absence of Grok be a critical loss for the messenger, or will Durov outplay everyone again by building something more effective inside his own ecosystem?

*Meta is designated an extremist organization and banned in Russia.