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Grok puts on the price tag
When you ask for an answer and a salesperson arrives too: Musk transforms the chatbot into a digital bazaar where GPUs feed on timed ads
Editorial Team8 August 2025

 

Elon Musk has revealed that X intends to insert ads into Grok’s replies to help fund the cost of GPUs, offering advertisers the opportunity to appear when users search for specific solutions. xAI will contribute to timely and effective targeting.

Key points:

  • Musk: Ads in Grok’s replies will fund GPUs
  • Advertisers will be able to sponsor relevant solutions requested by users
  • xAI (Musk’s AI startup) will support ad targeting
  • A move aimed at strengthening X’s struggling advertising business

Live, as if at a bar with investors, Elon Musk revealed an ambition that blends pragmatism and necessity: inserting ads directly into Grok’s replies. While the goal until now has been to make Grok the sharpest and most precise artificial mind around, today there’s a new, clear objective: to support the high cost of the GPUs needed to keep it running. Indeed, it seems that X is considering offering advertisers the ability to select from the AI chatbot’s responses: a user asking for a solution might find themselves presented with the most appropriate sponsored suggestion, with the timing of a metronome and the punctuality of a paid personal advisor.

Musk’s narrative displays an almost mechanical linearity: "When you turn to Grok to solve a problem," he explained, "advertising the specific solution at that moment would be ideal." A sort of "you asked, we’ll offer it to you," with the delicacy of a waiter bringing you a dessert and inviting you to enjoy it. And the final touch will be added by xAI, the tech creation Musk is banking on, acquired by X for an astronomical sum, ready to deploy algorithms to refine the targeting precision.

Behind these words, a bigger picture emerges: X, once a solid advertising machine, appears to have stumbled following the departure of former CEO Linda Yaccarino, and this move feels less like a whim than like a (forced) evolution. There’s no hint of bold promises, just the awareness that fueling expensive AI requires fresh fuel—in this case, revenue from advertisers who might appear precisely when it’s most needed, that of demand.

So here’s a well-calibrated picture: an AI that’s lucid and even snobbish in appearance, but also ready to lend a hand to those who pay to be there. The subtle irony is that the service becomes even more personal—when you want a useful answer—but comes with a hidden price in its most transparent form: an ad that arrives while you’re asking for answers.

With the precision of GPUs in one corner and the watchful eye of xAI aiming to center advertisers’ interests, X places its next advertising toy in the AI living room.