Yesterday, X began rolling out Grok, the “rebellious” AI-powered chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s startup xAI, to Premium+ subscribers on the , but warned that the beta version will face many problems, although it will be steadily improved. He also offered a time frame for Grok to reach other markets outside the US, noting that all English users (Premium+ subscribers) will be able to access Grok in “about a week or so.”
Japanese users, who are the second-largest user base for
Of course, Musk’s time frames for when things will happen don’t always happen — just ask any longtime Tesla watcher who’s spent time waiting On full self-driving (FSD). However, with Grok, Musk was just a person a little Late in terms of its release estimates. On November 22, for example, Musk said xAI’s Grok would launch to Premium+ subscribers “next week,” but the chatbot actually launched this week, on December 7.
Whether or not the chatbot is successful in increasing subscription revenue for X remains to be seen. For now, Grok is only part of X’s high-tier subscription offering – Premium+ at $16 per month. This is much more expensive than
The Premium+ subscription comes with access to other features to broaden its appeal, including the feature of seeing no ads in For You and Next Schedules on Revenue sharing for creators, identity verification, verified checkmark, access to Media Studio and more.
But until now, the majority of Twitter’s
However, it’s not clear right now what the ad-supported future of X might look like, as Musk has been alienating X’s advertisers — even telling them to “fuck yourself” to leave For X to be sustainable, it may need more users to sign up for Premium+ for Grok to help offset the loss of ad dollars as brands like Apple, Disney, IBM, Paramount, Walmart and others flee the platform.
It’s worth noting that X had its biggest month ever in terms of subscription revenue in November, generating $6.2 million in net revenue, after App Store fees, according to one estimate by an app intelligence provider. Utopia. However, that’s still less than a third of what Snapchat made for its in-app subscriptions, which topped $20 million for the first time last month.
In other words, there is still plenty of room for X to increase the number of subscribers, since it is said to have more than 500 million monthly active users. Whether it is or not CanOf course, it’s another story.