Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, developed by xAI, has become the world’s third-largest AI chatbot by website traffic, surpassing DeepSeek, with rapid growth driven by a surge of new users. Despite this success, xAI faces internal turmoil, staff departures, and regulatory scrutiny over ethical concerns, even as Grok continues to gain prominence behind ChatGPT and Gemini.
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, developed by his company xAI, has become the world’s third-largest AI chatbot by website traffic, surpassing China’s DeepSeek as of January 2026, according to data from SimilarWeb. Grok recorded an estimated 314 million website visits in January, a significant increase from 271.2 million the previous month, marking its fourth consecutive month of growth. In contrast, DeepSeek’s traffic declined to 298.3 million visits in January, down from December 2025, allowing Grok to overtake it in global rankings.
Despite Grok’s rapid growth, it still trails far behind the two industry leaders: OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. ChatGPT remains the dominant AI chatbot, with 5.7 billion website visits in January 2026, while Gemini holds second place with 2.1 billion visits. Notably, Gemini’s usage has tripled over the past six months, making it the fastest-growing chatbot, with a 19% month-over-month increase in January. In comparison, ChatGPT’s growth has plateaued, peaking at 6.2 billion visits in October before experiencing a slight decline.
Grok’s surge in popularity appears to be driven by a large influx of new users. SimilarWeb data indicates that slightly more than half of Grok’s unique visitors in January were first-time users, the highest ratio of new to returning users among all major chatbots. This suggests that Grok is rapidly expanding its user base, even as it faces stiff competition from more established platforms.
However, xAI is currently facing significant internal and external challenges. The company recently lost about half of its original co-founders, including Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, reportedly due to disputes over the technical direction and pressure to accelerate the AI model’s development. Staff complaints, as reported by the Financial Times, have cited Elon Musk’s “unreasonable demands” to quickly enhance Grok’s capabilities in order to compete with rivals like OpenAI.
Additionally, xAI is dealing with negative publicity and regulatory scrutiny, particularly in Europe, over the generation of sexually explicit deepfakes using Grok’s technology. These issues have raised concerns about the company’s ability to manage the ethical and legal implications of its AI products. Despite these setbacks, Grok’s recent growth highlights its rising prominence in the global AI chatbot landscape.