(Reuters) -Elon Musk's AI startup xAI will pay Telegram $300 million to deploy its Grok chatbot on the messaging app, aiming to tap the platform's more than one billion users and sharpen its competitive edge in the booming artificial intelligence market.
Under the one-year deal, xAI will also give Telegram half of any subscription sales made through the messaging app, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said in a post on X earlier on Wednesday, adding that the $300 million will be paid in cash and stock.
Durov said xAI will only access data that Telegram users explicitly share with Grok through direct interactions.
Musk said no deal has been signed in a reply to the post on X, to which Durov said the parties have agreed in principle but formalities were pending.
The deal could provide xAI, which acquired X earlier this year, with valuable data to train and develop its AI models.
With many open-source repositories exhausted, AI companies face increasing challenges in sourcing quality data, pushing firms such as Meta Platforms to utilize public interactions with AI for model training.
According to its privacy policy, X uses public posts from users to train its AI models. It was not immediately clear if xAI would utilize data from Telegram similarly.
XAI, which has entered several tie-ups this year to bolster its position in both AI infrastructure and financial services, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Shounak Dasgupta)
