SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X that the cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue, and he confirmed that subscribers' jumping usage meters were not a glitch. He did not say what Grok Bot costs to run or whether SpaceX had reduced allowances, and he has not said how usage limits will change.

Elon Musk says Grok Bot was costing SpaceX too much to run for the money it brings in. The SpaceX chief executive made the admission on X on Sunday, replying to subscribers who said their weekly usage of the AI agent had run out days early. Some users reported that their meters jumped from as low as 50% to 100% without any increase in activity. Musk confirmed it was not a glitch.

Did Musk say Grok Bot costs too much to run?

“The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue,” Musk wrote in one reply. It was the clearest explanation he has offered. He has not addressed the issue on his main feed, where he has kept promoting the agent’s ability to help people shop for gifts for their families.

The timing is awkward for the company. SpaceX recently went public, and in a filing last month it said AI now makes up 52% of company income. Its renamed “Super Intelligence” division turned a profit of $431 million, which is rare in the AI industry. That profit would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time costs tied to the company’s acquisition of Cursor. Musk has described Grok Bot as having “the fastest growth of a product that I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Musk’s posts did not say how much Grok Bot costs to run. They also did not say whether SpaceX had reduced allowances. In another reply, he asked a user whether a plan with more usage cost too much. A third reply said “just being sensible.” Business Insider reported the exchange as Musk defending smaller allowances, and Forbes noted that his posts left the central question unanswered.

Meters that jumped overnight

Why did Grok Bot usage meters jump?

Over the weekend, subscribers posted on X that their usage meters had jumped sharply. One user’s meter went from 33% to 66%, the Telegraph reported. Others said they had passed their limits overnight. The posts described a similar pattern on Cursor’s community forum, where users said their weekly meters flipped between 77% and 100%. Their activity had not changed.

Cursor reported a problem with billing and its usage dashboard on Sunday, according to Forbes. The company later marked the issue as resolved. It is not clear whether that problem caused the jumps.

Grok Bot is a separate product from the Grok chatbot. SpaceX launched the agent in August. It uses a virtual computer to carry out tasks such as shopping, and its plans run up to $200 a month. In October, Musk said it would also use Claude, Midjourney and Suno.

Growth figures from the earnings call

The weekend posts came less than two weeks after SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call. On that call, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said Grok Bot had 800,000 paid weekly users in early October, more than double the number from the month before. Musk said on the call, “I’ve never seen anything grow this fast.” He also said Grok Bot may end up using most of the company’s compute.

Several X users responded to his new posts by quoting one of his earlier claims. In October, he wrote that saving money for the distant future is pointless because AI will bring abundance.

Other AI companies are rationing access as well. OpenAI will merge its separate ChatGPT and Codex allowances next month, the Telegraph reported, which could mean people who use both hit their caps sooner. OpenAI said higher-paying subscribers would get bigger allowances but made no such promise for cheaper plans.

Meta has not said what its Muse agent costs to run. Mark Zuckerberg told investors last month that Muse is “very compute-intensive” and not yet profitable, Business Insider reported. Muse passed 10 million users in October.

Will Grok Bot usage limits change?

Musk has not said how subscribers’ usage limits will change going forward.

Cet article a été rédigé avec l'assistance de l'IA.
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