{"id":13689,"date":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/13689\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","slug":"groks-ai-companions-drove-downloads-but-its-latest-model-is-the-one-making-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/13689\/","title":{"rendered":"Grok’s AI companions drove downloads, but its latest model is the one making money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grok\u2019s raunchy, unfiltered AI companions<\/a> may be making headlines for their unhinged<\/a> and often NSFW responses, but it\u2019s Grok 4, xAI\u2019s latest model, that\u2019s been driving the app\u2019s revenue of late.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk\u2019s xAI launched<\/a> Grok 4 late on July 9, and by Friday, July 11, Grok\u2019s gross revenue on iOS had jumped a whopping 325% to $419,000, up from $99,000 the day before the Grok 4 launch, according to app intelligence firm Appfigures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Grok continued to pull in higher-than-usual revenue in the days following the launch of the new model, with gross revenue over $367,000 for a couple of days before dipping down to $310,000 on July 14.<\/p>\n

In addition, daily downloads of the Grok iOS app had increased 279% to 197,000 by July 11, up from 52,000 before Grok 4 launched.<\/p>\n

But following the addition of Grok\u2019s AI companions the next week, on July 14, the jump in downloads and revenue was less pronounced. While curiosity about the companions likely drove more installs, the feature isn\u2019t yet poised to be a significant moneymaker for the company, despite being only available to \u201cSuper Grok\u201d subscribers paying $30 per month.<\/p>\n

Grok\u2019s iOS downloads globally were up 40% the day after the companions launched, reaching 171,000 daily installs, but revenue increased just 9%, hitting $337,000. <\/p>\n

So while it\u2019s clear that there was an impact from the launch, it\u2019s decidedly smaller than the launch of the new AI model.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Given Grok\u2019s expensive new subscription offering, timed alongside the Grok 4 launch, it\u2019s not surprising to see that even a smaller increase in the number of paying subscribers could drive Grok\u2019s iOS revenue significantly higher.<\/p>\n

The company announced<\/a> that, in addition to Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy, it would also offer a $300-per-month subscription called SuperGrok Heavy, its priciest plan to date. The plan offers subscribers early access to Grok 4 Heavy and other new features, xAI said, but it\u2019s more expensive than comparable plans from other major AI providers, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to see this demand for Grok\u2019s subscription plans, even though the AI was initially consulting Elon Musk\u2019s X posts<\/a> for answers. xAI has since addressed<\/a> this issue.<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Credits:Appfigures<\/p>\n

Interest in the new model also drove up Grok\u2019s ranking on the U.S. App Store shortly after its launch, making Grok the No. 3 app overall and No. 2 in the Productivity category by July 12.<\/p>\n

That interest has declined somewhat over the past week \u2014 the app is now No. 17 overall \u2014 though it\u2019s still No. 2 in Productivity, Appfigures data shows.<\/p>\n

Appfigures notes that it focused on iOS data for this analysis, as that dataset is currently more comprehensive than data from Android devices. The latter is only available through July 14 for the time being, as Appfigures\u2019 model needs more time to process Google Play data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grok\u2019s raunchy, unfiltered AI companions may be making headlines for their unhinged and often NSFW responses, but it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,5242,276,277,49,48,1682,61,1684],"class_list":{"0":"post-13689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-companions","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-grok","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}