Grok AI Lags So Far Behind Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini It Cannot Catch Up

There are increasing signs that as use of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini has grown so exponentially that Musk's SpaceX Grok AI can never catch up in large measure because it just isn't as good. Investor statements that "OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi and Grok is RC Cola" underscore the brutal reality - and perception. 

That Musk has recently agreed to rent massive amounts of computing power to Anthropic is being taken as a sign that he is acknowledging this competitive reality and is pivoting to becoming an external computing support partner for the major AI companies, especially Anthropic, which is the 'enemy of his enemy,' OpenAI. It will undoubtedly be profitable - certainly an issue for Musk given Tesla's travails - but it reduces the Grok AI enterprise to the functional equivalent of a utility like Con Ed. JL 

 

Georgia Wells reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Elon Musk’s AI model, Grok, lags far behind its fast-growing competitors—and an agreement by parent company SpaceX to rent computing power to Anthropic raises questions about whether it can catch up. Downloads of Grok fell to 8.3 million in April, from a high of more than 20 million in January. In a survey of U.S. consumers and workers who use AI, the percent of respondents who said they paid for Grok remained flat at 0.174% in the second quarter of 2026. 48% of respondents said their company was using Claude, up from 21% the prior year. 40% said their company was using Gemini, up from 27% a year earlier. 7% said their company was using Grok. The hottest front for competition among is coding assistants (but) Grok is barely growing within enterprise organizations.  “OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi and Grok is RC Cola”

Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence model, Grok, lags far behind its fast-growing competitors—and an agreement by parent company SpaceX to rent massive computing power to Anthropic raises questions about whether it can still catch up.

The deal, signed in early May, will give the maker of the Claude AI model and chatbot all the computing capacity at one of Musk’s main data centers. Anthropic and rival OpenAI have been racing to acquire all the computing capacity they can as booming demand challenges their ability to serve their models. 

Since its launch two years ago, Grok has reached millions of users through its integration with Musk’s social network, X, and controversial features such as a sexualized AI companion. But new data shows its growth appears to have flattened. 

Downloads of Grok fell to about 8.3 million in April, from a high of more than 20 million in January, according to analysis firm AppMagic.

In a survey of more than 260,000 U.S. consumers and workers who use AI, the percent of respondents who said they paid for Grok remained mostly flat at 0.174% in the second quarter of 2026 versus 0.173% a year ago, according to research firm Recon Analytics. More than 6% of respondents said they paid for ChatGPT. 

“OpenAI is Coke, Anthropic is Pepsi and Grok is RC Cola,” said Ben Pouladian, an engineer and tech investor based in Los Angeles. “I never really saw people drinking it.”

Pouladian has adopted some of Musk’s tech in his life. He drives a Tesla and is active on X. When Grok came out in late 2023, he downloaded it and played around, but never became a power user. He said he prefers Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and sometimes Google’s Gemini.

Musk and Grok’s parent company, SpaceX, didn’t respond to requests for comment. In public statements, Musk has characterized it as less than competitive in the AI race.

In court for his suit against OpenAI in late April, Musk played down the size and significance of xAI, the AI company he recently merged into SpaceX. He described it as “pretty small,” “very small” and “the smallest of the AI companies.”

OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022 marked the introduction to AI for many consumers. By mid-2025, more than three-quarters of respondents in the Recon Analytics survey had heard of ChatGPT.

Musk released Grok in late 2023. He set out to make it the most popular AI in the world and said it would be “maximally truth-seeking” and less “woke” than its competitors.

Musk spent much of the summer of 2025 holed up at his AI startup, trying to catch up in the AI arms race. He personally oversaw the design of a racy chatbot. Grok also offered settings that let users create suggestive and sexualized content that former employees said spurred engagement. 

The January peak in Grok downloads came after an update permitted users to virtually undress people in photos; widespread use of the feature on images of minors drew scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers, and the company limited access to it.

The hottest front for competition among the major labs is coding assistants, with corporate adoption of the tools driving rapid revenue growth.

Grok remains behind there as well. It is barely growing within enterprise organizations, according to Erik Bradley, chief strategist and research director at market research firm Enterprise Technology Research. Meanwhile, Bradley said, use of Claude and Gemini is soaring.

In a survey of about 500 people, ETR found 48% of respondents in March said their company was currently using and planned to continue to use Claude, up from 21% the prior year. Forty percent of respondents in March said their company was using and planned to continue to use Gemini, up from 27% a year earlier. Seven percent of respondents in March said their company was using and planned to use Grok, up from 4%. 

Musk faces pressure to show investors his companies are making money ahead of SpaceX’s expected initial public offering this year. Analysts said the deal with Anthropic for the computing capacity at the Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tenn., could bring Musk a few billion dollars a year.

Arnal Dayaratna, vice president of software development at research firm IDC, said the deal shows how Musk is beginning to turn Colossus into an external computing platform for major AI companies rather than only using the facility for internal model development.

Guillermo Rauch, chief executive of Vercel, a hosting company for AI agents, cautions against counting Musk out of the AI race. He said he was optimistic Musk’s recent reorganization of his AI unit will strengthen its ability to compete.

“Once Elon focuses, which is what is happening right now, we see him perform very very well,” Rauch said.

Rauch said his customers’ behavior shows that developers often move quickly between models. He said engineers might flock to Grok if the company delivers better performance in one of its coming models.

Musk’s willingness to enter a deal with Anthropic marks a shift in his posture toward that company. In February, Musk described the company’s AI as “misanthropic and evil” in a post on X.

Tech investor Pouladian said Musk’s newfound embrace of Anthropic could stem from Anthropic’s antagonism toward OpenAI, which Musk is fighting in court. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and it’s also my compute partner,” he said.