Grok's downloads plummet 58% as only 0.17% pay for anti-woke AI

Elon Musk's Grok chatbot, known for its anti-woke stance and controversial behavior (including calling itself 'MechaHitler' and enabling non-consensual nude images), is failing to gain traction. According to AppMagic data cited by the Wall Street Journal, downloads of Grok's standalone app dropped from 20 million in January to just 8.3 million in April — a 58% decline. A Recon Analytics survey of over 260,000 Americans revealed that only 0.174% of respondents pay for Grok, compared to 6% for ChatGPT. One engineer summarized the AI market by saying, 'OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi, and Grok is RC Cola' — but noted that RC Cola costs $30/month.

With Grok underperforming, Musk is shifting focus. xAI recently began renting out its Colossus data center's processing power to Anthropic (despite Musk's public attacks on the company). Now, SpaceX (now xAI's parent company) is in talks with Google to deploy AI data centers in low-Earth orbit. Experts are skeptical about the feasibility, but the plan could serve as a long-term profit pitch for SpaceX's upcoming IPO, similar to Musk's 'full self-driving' promises for Tesla. For now, Google faces low risk: if SpaceX succeeds, Google gains access to orbital compute; if not, business as usual.