WSJ reports Elon Musk's Grok is decreasing in popularity, even among its competitors

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is significantly trailing competitors like ChatGPT and Claude, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.

Grok downloads fell to approximately 8.3 million in April from over 20 million in January — a 59% decline in three months despite the surge in AI. Only 0.174% of surveyed AI users paid for Grok in the second quarter of 2026, essentially unchanged from 0.173% earlier in the year.

The competitive pressure is evident: Anthropic, Claude's developer, secured all computing capacity at one of Musk's primary data centers in early May.

Tech investor Ben Pouladian compared Grok's market position unfavorably to competitors.

"OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi and Grok is RC Cola," Pouladian told the Journal, "I never really saw people drinking it."

Musk launched Grok in late 2023 with ambitious promises, later personally overseeing design of a "racy" chatbot, allowing suggestive content to boost engagement. However, the strategy failed, with Grok barely growing even within enterprise organizations.

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