Musk makes banks buy his crappy chatbot if they want in on the SpaceX IPO
TechnoKing Elon Musk is forcing banks to buy subscriptions to his glitchy, scandal-prone AI chatbot Grok if they want a role in SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO. The move looks less like a business strategy and more like a billionaire using leverage to prop up a struggling side hustle.
Mr. Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. to buy subscriptions to Grok, his artificial intelligence chatbot, which is part of SpaceX, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about confidential discussions.
Some of the banks have agreed to spend tens of millions on the chatbot, and they have already started integrating Grok into their I.T. systems, three of the people said.
Mr. Musk and a SpaceX spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
This is a familiar Musk play: bundle the shiny thing everyone wants with the thing that can’t stand on its own. Grok isn’t winning on merit; it’s being stapled to a trillion-dollar IPO and shoved down Wall Street’s throat. In any normal regulatory environment, forcing financial institutions into what looks like a pay-to-play arrangement tied to a securities deal would raise some uncomfortable questions. Luckily for Musk, he spent millions electing a President who’d let him destroy any regulator that dared look. The only real innovation here isn’t AI, it’s having bought the US government.