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A comment on XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app. Parent comment

Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by nickpsecurity on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @03:55PM (#44120073)
I thought that. Then, I remembered PayPal straight up paying people to use their platform. We saw how that worked out.

So, the question is whether they should pay to generate demand in a new market. Then, who to pay and how much?

I'll also note that OpenAI took the market by offering an expensive service for free (ChatGPT). Then, they offered a monthly plan that may or may not have been profitable. One could argue that OpenAI has been paying people to use its service for a long time.

I also wonder if xAI gets something out of it. For instance, they might get all the conversations with the AI. I believe ChatGPT similarly put free, user conversations to use internally in ways that boosted their paid apps. xAI might have some plays like that.

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Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by rchaud on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @04:31PM (#44120384)
When was PayPal doing that? I remember having to create an account 20 years ago because they were the only payment processor option on Ebay, that seemed to be their moat. These days, I use Paypal as a "wallet" that's connected to my CC, to pay for stuff on sites where I don't want to put in my CC information.
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Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by akurtzhs on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @04:52PM (#44120550)
Paypal paid people to open an account or to refer new accounts early on. Inspired Dropbox to do the same thing with free storage.
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Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by edent on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @05:13PM (#44120722)
PayPal still regularly send out offers which pay new users.

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/invite/terms

It is a common way for businesses to acquire customers.

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Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by bag_boy on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @07:51PM (#44121650)
How do you PayPal straight up paying people to use their platform worked out?
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Re:XAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat... by nickpsecurity on Wednesday May 28, 2025 @10:10PM (#44122456)
It's market cap was recently $69.51 billion. I'll add the eBay partnership to the reasons for its long-term success.
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