Telegram has forged a deal with Elon Musk’s xAI to weave Grok AI into the fabric of the encrypted messaging platform.
This isn’t just a friendly collaboration; xAI is putting serious money on the table – a cool $300 million, a mix of hard cash and equity. And for Telegram, they’ll pocket 50% of any subscription money Grok pulls in through their app.
This leap into the world of AI couldn’t come at a more interesting time for Telegram. While CEO Pavel Durov is wrestling with some pretty serious legal headaches, and governments in certain corners of the globe are giving the platform the side-eye, the company’s bank balance is looking healthy.
In fact, Telegram is gearing up to raise at least $1.5 billion by issuing five-year bonds. With a rather tempting 9% yield, these bonds are also designed to help buy back some of the debt from their 2021 bond issue. It seems big-name investors like BlackRock, Mubadala, and Citadel are still keen, suggesting they see a bright future for the messaging service.
And the numbers do tell a story of a significant comeback. Cast your mind back to 2023, and Telegram was nursing a $173 million loss. Fast forward to 2024, and they’d flipped that on its head, banking a $540 million profit from $1.4 billion in revenue. They’re not stopping there either, with optimistic forecasts for 2025 pointing to profits north of $700 million from a $2 billion revenue pot.
So, what will Grok actually do for Telegram users? The hope is that xAI’s conversational AI will bring a whole new layer of smarts to the platform. This includes supercharged information searching, help with drafting messages, and all sorts of automated tricks. It’s a play that could help Telegram unlock fresh monetisation opportunities and compete with Meta bringing Llama-powered smarts to WhatsApp.
However, Telegram’s integration of AI is all happening against a pretty dramatic backdrop. Pavel Durov, the man at the company’s helm, has found himself in hot water.
Back in August 2024, Durov was arrested in France and later indicted on a dozen charges. These aren’t minor infringements either; they include serious accusations like complicity in spreading child exploitation material and drug trafficking, all linked to claims that Telegram wasn’t doing enough to police its content.
Durov was initially stuck in France, but by March 2025, he was given the nod to leave the country, at least for a while. What happens next with these legal battles is anyone’s guess, but it’s a massive cloud hanging over the company.
And it’s not just personal legal woes for Durov. Entire governments are starting to lose patience. Vietnam, for instance, has had its Ministry of Science and Technology order internet providers to pull the plug on Telegram. Their reasoning? They say the platform has become a hotbed for crime.
Vietnamese officials reckon 68% of Telegram channels and groups in the country are up to no good, involved in everything from fraud to drug deals. Telegram, for its part, said it was taken aback by the move, insisting it had always tried to play ball with legal requests from Vietnam.
Back to the xAI partnership, it’s a clear signal of Telegram looking to the future and seeing AI as a core pillar of it. The money involved and the promise of shared revenues show just how much potential both sides see in getting Grok into the hands of Telegram’s millions of users.
The next twelve months will be a real test for Telegram. Can the company innovate its way forward while also showing it can be a responsible player on the global stage?
(Photo from Unsplash)
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