Elon Musk is losing ground as Grok is left far behind by ChatGPT.
Once envisioned by Elon Musk as the world's least-waked AI, Grok has now fallen behind ChatGPT and Claude in the fierce AI battle.
Báo Khoa học và Đời sống•14/05/2026
Grok was once seen as a strategic asset helping Elon Musk challenge ChatGPT's dominance in the artificial intelligence race, but less than three years after its launch, this chatbot is showing serious signs of fatigue, with both downloads and the percentage of paying users stagnating under pressure from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. According to data from AppMagic, Grok downloads plummeted to just around 8.3 million in April 2026, significantly lower than the peak of over 20 million downloads at the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, a survey by Recon Analytics showed that the percentage of users willing to pay for Grok remained almost unchanged over the past year, at only around 0.17%.
Meanwhile, competitors like OpenAI with ChatGPT and Anthropic with its Claude chatbot are experiencing rapid growth in both the consumer and enterprise segments, leading many experts to liken Grok to the "RC Cola" of the AI industry – a well-known name but lacking the competitiveness to rival market leaders.
Despite being directly integrated into the X and possessing many controversial features such as a sexually suggestive chatbot or a tool for editing sensitive photos, Grok failed to maintain its appeal in the long run, as most tech users now prefer ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for their better practical work capabilities.
Not only is Grok lagging behind in the consumer market, but it's also far behind in the enterprise AI and programming sector, where companies are investing billions of dollars to automate tasks. A survey by Enterprise Technology Research shows that only about 7% of businesses surveyed are using Grok, significantly lower than Claude and Gemini. More notably, SpaceX recently signed an agreement to lease massive computing power at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis to Anthropic, raising suspicions that Musk is shifting his focus to AI infrastructure instead of trying to turn Grok into a market-dominating chatbot as he initially envisioned. Many analysts believe this decision reflects the harsh reality of the current AI war, where the cost of operating the model is increasingly expensive and even tech billionaires like Elon Musk are struggling to keep up with the pace of development of competitors who are years ahead in terms of data, customers, and enterprise ecosystems.
Nevertheless, investors haven't completely ruled Musk out of the game yet, as history has shown that the billionaire has repeatedly turned the tables in fields like electric vehicles and rockets, and if xAI releases a sufficiently powerful new AI model in the near future, Grok still has a chance to return to the world's hottest technology race.
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