Musk starts a new bromance with trapped Telegram founder Durov

A $300m deal proposed between the CEO of the messaging app and the owner of X has far-reaching implications.

- By Darren Loucaides

Elon Musk's break with Donald Trump may appear rash from a business point of view.

Tesla lost $152.4bn of market value on Thursday and the total value of his SpaceX company's contracts with the US government is $89.2bn.

But there are signs Musk knew what was coming - and was getting prepared. In recent weeks, he has sought out ways to shore up parts of his corporate empire before all hell broke loose. He made some calls. And just as one bromance was beginning to implode, another was getting started.

Musk lately held a rendezvous in Paris with Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and another of tech's most controversial figures, with the aim of sketching out a deal that could have unknowable consequences for facts and the truth. It could also be a boon for Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI at a time when it is seeking a $113bn valuation.

Details emerged on 28 May, when Durov announced a partnership with Grok, the chatbot owned by xAI, that could allow it to feed on data from his messaging platform. The deal would allow Grok access to the data of any of Telegram's 1 billion users who interact with it - far more than the 600 million users that the chatbot has exposure to via X, formerly Twitter.

Given Grok's recent ramblings about "white genocide" in South Africa - blamed by xAI on an "unauthorised modification" of its code - the partnership has the potential to turbocharge toxicity on Telegram, a messenger turned social network already rife with conspiratorial and extreme content.

In return for integrating Grok with Telegram's data, Durov claimed Musk would be paying $300m. "This summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market," Durov posted on X, where he follows one person - Musk. "Together, we win."