Elon Musk’s Grok Surpasses DeepSeek To Become Third-Biggest AI Chatbot

Key Concepts

• Grock: Elon Musk’s AI chatbot developed by xAI.
• Similarweb: A web analytics service providing website traffic data.
• Deepseek: A Chinese AI chatbot.
• ChatGPT: OpenAI’s leading AI chatbot.
• Gemini: Google’s AI chatbot.
• Claude: Anthropic’s AI chatbot.
• xAI: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
• Deepfakes: Synthetic media where a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness.

Grock’s Rising Popularity & Market Position (January 2026)

According to data from Similarweb, Grock has achieved the position of the world’s third largest AI chatbot as of January 2026, surpassing Deepseek in website traffic. Grock recorded an estimated 314 million website visits globally in January, representing a significant increase from the 271.2 million visits logged in the previous month. This marks the fourth consecutive month of growth for the chatbot. This growth is notable, but Grock remains considerably behind the market leaders, ChatGPT and Gemini.

Comparative Website Traffic Data (January 2026)

The ranking of AI chatbots based on Similarweb’s January 2026 data is as follows:

• ChatGPT: 5.7 billion website visits (leader)
• Gemini: 2.1 billion website visits (second)
• Grock: 314 million website visits (third)
• Deepseek: 298.3 million website visits (fourth – surpassed by Grock)
• Claude: 202.9 million website visits (fifth)

It’s important to note that Similarweb’s data for Grock only reflects traffic to the standalone Grock website and does not include usage of Grock integrated within the X platform (formerly Twitter).

User Acquisition & Growth Trends

A key driver of Grock’s recent growth is a surge in new users. Similarweb reports that slightly over half of Grock’s unique visitors in January were first-time users, representing the highest ratio of new-to-returning users among all major chatbots analyzed. In contrast, ChatGPT’s growth has plateaued, maintaining 5.7 billion visits from July 2025 to January 2026. Gemini, however, experienced substantial growth, tripling its usage from under 700 million visits in July 2025 to 2.1 billion in January 2026. Gemini was also identified as January’s fastest-growing chatbot, with a month-over-month increase of over 19%. ChatGPT peaked at 6.2 billion visits in October before a slight decline.

xAI Internal Challenges & Regulatory Scrutiny

xAI is currently facing internal challenges, including the departure of two co-founders, Jimmy Ba and Tony Woo, along with several other founding members. This represents a loss of approximately half of the company’s original co-founders. Ba’s departure is attributed to technical disagreements regarding the pressure to rapidly improve the AI model’s performance. Reports from the Financial Times cite Elon Musk’s “unreasonable demands” to accelerate competition with OpenAI as a contributing factor.

Furthermore, xAI is facing negative publicity and scrutiny from European regulators due to the generation of sexually explicit deepfakes using Grock technology. This raises concerns about the responsible development and deployment of AI-powered image and video generation capabilities.

Conclusion

Grock is demonstrating significant growth in user base and website traffic, positioning itself as a notable competitor in the AI chatbot landscape. However, it still lags significantly behind ChatGPT and Gemini. xAI faces both internal challenges related to team dynamics and external pressures concerning the ethical implications of its technology, particularly regarding deepfake generation. The long-term success of Grock will depend on xAI’s ability to address these challenges while continuing to innovate and attract users.