【AI前沿】As Grok flounders, SpaceX bets future on beating Big Tech at AI

Grok those numbersAs Grok flounders, SpaceX bets future on beating Big Tech at AISpaceX IPO filing pitches orbital data centers as Grok lags rival AI services.Jeremy Hsu–May 21, 2026 5:51 pm|48An iPhone screen shows icons for Claude by Anthropic, ChatGPT by OpenAI, Gemini by Google, and Grok by xAI.Credit:Matteo Della Torre/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesAn iPhone screen shows icons for Claude by Anthropic, ChatGPT by OpenAI, Gemini by Google, and Grok by xAI.Credit:Matteo Della Torre/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesText settingsStory textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidthStandardWideLinksStandardOrange Subscribers onlyLearn moreMinimize to navElon Musk’s SpaceX has highlighted AI as the tentpole of the company’s future, projecting a multi-trillion-dollar market opportunity that rivals the total value of all US economic activity. But the company must first win over customers who generally favor AI models from competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.SpaceX described its traditional space launch and satellite business as playing a supporting role to its fledgling AI business in financial disclosures that preceded an expected initial public offering of company stock. That stems from SpaceX havingformally acquiredMusk’s company xAI earlier this year—the SpaceXAI division now oversees the Grok AI models and the associated Grok chatbot previously developed by xAI.TheSpaceX S-1 filingclaimed that the company has “the largest actionable total addressable market in human history” and highlighted AI as representing most of that opportunity at an estimated $26.5 trillion market—a number that comes close to rivalingUS nominal GDPthat stood at nearly $32 trillion in the first quarter of 2026.It is unclear what timeframe SpaceX is using for its addressable market estimate, but that is significantly larger than third-party estimates for the global AI market. For comparison,Gartnerestimated that worldwide spending on AI will reach $3.3 trillion by 2027. Similarly,Citigrouphas suggested that the global AI market may surpass $4.2 trillion by 2030.To fulfill its ambitions, SpaceX must first fight to catch up in the ongoing AI race against well-financed competitors backed by Big Tech. Musk himself described xAI prior to its SpaceX merger as “the smallest of the AI companies” during court hearings for hislawsuit against OpenAI, according toThe Wall Street Journal.Looking for a comebackThe Grok AI chatbot developed by xAI has lagged behind other AI services in terms of usage, despite being heavily integrated with Musk’s social media site X. An AppMagic survey of 260,000 US consumers and workers who use AI found that just 0.174 percent paid to use Grok in the second quarter of 2026, The Wall Street Journal reported. The same survey showed more than 6 percent of respondents paying for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.Corporate use ofAnthropic’s Claudeand theGoogle GeminiAI models has also soared in the past year, according to the market research firm Enterprise Technology Research. The firm’s survey of 500 people—also highlighted by The Wall Street Journal—showed reported Claude usage among respondents’ companies jumping from 21 percent to 48 percent between 2025 and 2026. Similarly, reported Gemini usage rose from 27 percent to 40 percent in the same time period.Grok’s corporate usage also saw a smaller bump, rising from 4 percent to 7 percent. “We have launched Grok Business, Grok Enterprise, Grok API, and xAI Gov, products that we believe will be attractive to enterprises and governments, and we expect substantial opportunities to acquire new customers,” SpaceX wrote in its S-1 filing.However,Reuters reportedthat “xAI’s Grok chatbot has been a flop with one of the world’s largest customers—the US government.” The Reuters examination of AI inventory records from federal agencies in 2025 showed just three public mentions of using either xAI or Grok out of more than 400 publicly disclosed examples of AI use by the government.The peak of Grok’s download popularity coincided with a January 2026 update that allowed Grok users to generate millions of sexualized images of women and children by using real photos tovirtually undresspeople—a situation that persisted for weeks before developers addressed the situation. The AInudifying scandalled to lawsuits against xAI and spurred the European Union toban nudifying apps.Grok also still incorporates features such as “Spicy” and “Unhinged” modes. The SpaceX financial disclosure described those features as presenting “heightened risks, including reputational harm, the generation of potentially explicit content and misinformation or deceptive outputs, potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery, intellectual property infringement, or content that could be viewed as exploitative, harmful, harassing, abusive, or discriminatory.”From a business standpoint, SpaceX acknowledged that this leaves the company open to “the risk of regulatory scrutiny, enforcement actions, litigation, or claims of harm, as well as reputatio