Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Elon Musk has agreed a $300mn deal with Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, to distribute xAI’s Grok chatbot to the messaging app’s 1bn users, in a sign of blossoming partnership between the two mercurial billionaires.
As part of a one-year deal, Telegram will receive $300mn in cash and equity from xAI, as well as half of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via the messaging app, Durov wrote on X and Telegram on Wednesday. Musk later wrote on X that a deal had not been “signed”, but Durov responded that they had “agreed in principal”.
Musk and Durov met in Paris recently ahead of the deal’s announcement, according to several people familiar with the matter, as their tech “bromance” grows. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive shares with the Russian-born Telegram boss a passion for free expression and opposition to what they see as government censorship.
xAI’s Telegram tie-up marks the first big expansion for the artificial intelligence group into a new social media service beyond Musk’s X platform. It follows last week’s new alliance with Microsoft, which is making xAI available through its Azure cloud computing platform.
xAI bought X for $45bn in March. Telegram will own a stake in xAI as part of the two companies’ agreement.
The partnership will promote and integrate Musk’s chatbot in several ways inside the Telegram app, exposing xAI to new audiences and valuable data, as social media groups including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta pour investment into the AI race.
Last week, the Financial Times reported that Telegram was launching a bond offering of about $1.5bn in order to buy back existing debt. According to a presentation shared with investors and seen by the FT, the company made $1.4bn revenues in 2024, up from $343mn a year earlier, and made its first annual profit of $540mn.
The rapid growth comes despite Durov being detained by French authorities last year. He was placed under formal investigation over Telegram’s alleged failure to address criminality including child abuse and terrorism on its platform. While the investigation continues, judges have ordered him to stay in France, although they have allowed him to go on business trips to Dubai.
Durov and Musk are aligned by their stances on free speech. In recent weeks, Durov has publicly criticised what he claims were French efforts to influence presidential elections in Romania where a far-right candidate was polling strongly. He said he had rejected a request by Nicolas Lerner, head of the French intelligence service, to close down channels of “conservative voices” in Romania — something the French agency flatly denied.
Durov again criticised France while speaking remotely at the Oslo Freedom Forum after judges refused to let him travel there. He said authorities asked Telegram to shut down a channel of “far-left protesters and demonstrators” but he refused because it “seemed completely legitimate, and we refused to comply”.
He said he had done so “despite the obvious personal risks I’m taking with these decisions.”
The French interior minister did not respond to a request for comment.
Durov’s approach appears to borrow from the playbook of Musk, a self-declared free speech absolutist, who has increasingly used X to accuse certain foreign leaders of alleged censorship, challenging so-called “takedown” requests in countries including Brazil, India and Australia. He has also repeatedly accused both the EU and UK governments of censorship, and backed the far-right AfD party in Germany.
However, critics argue that Musk is selective in the challenges he takes up.
On Sunday, the X owner shared Durov’s post about the French intelligence request on Romania to his 220mn followers writing: “Wow.”
xAI and Telegram declined to comment further.