Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, has been gaining U.S. market share in recent months, according to data cited by Reuters, even as the tool faces global criticism and regulatory scrutiny tied to non-consensual sexualized images. The data shows Grok’s U.S. market share rose to 17.8% last month, up from 14% in December and 1.9% in January 2025.
The increase strengthens Grok’s position in a fast-shifting U.S. chatbot market, where OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the leader and Google’s Gemini is the No. 2 app, based on the same dataset. Reuters’ report also links Grok’s growth to its deep integration inside Musk’s social media platform X, which promotes the chatbot through placement and paid subscription bundles.
Grok climbs to third place in the US
Apptopia data cited in the Reuters report shows Grok ranked as the third most-used chatbot in the United States in January, behind ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The report says ChatGPT’s share fell to 52.9% last month from 80.9% in January last year, while Gemini’s share rose to 29.4% from 17.3% over the same period.
The Reuters report describes the gain as a positive signal for xAI, the Musk-owned startup behind Grok, which it calls money-losing and says has been spending aggressively to scale infrastructure to stay competitive in Silicon Valley’s AI race. Reuters also says Grok is built into X, and that X has integrated it across the platform, including featuring it on the navigation bar.
Backlash over sexualized images
The Reuters report says Grok was used to generate a wave of non-consensual sexualized images of women and minors, drawing global censure and regulatory scrutiny. It also says Grok flooded X last month with AI-altered, near-nude images of real people in response to user requests, which triggered global outrage and probes.
According to Reuters, X announced curbs that stopped Grok’s account on the platform from producing such images, but Reuters says the Grok chatbot continued to do so when prompted. Reuters reports that X and xAI did not respond to requests for comment.
X promotion and company shifts
Emarketer principal analyst Nate Elliott attributed much of Grok’s growth to promotion through X, saying, “I suspect that cross-promotion with X is the biggest reason for Grok’s growth.” Reuters says X has bundled different tiers of premium Grok access with some of its paid subscriptions.
Reuters also reports that Musk overhauled xAI’s management on Wednesday after several co-founders departed, leaving the startup with only half of its original 12 co-founders and raising questions about stability. In the same report, an xAI executive said during an all-hands meeting posted on X that the company generated “6 billion images in the last 30 days,” and compared that to a Google post saying “1 billion images were generated using Nano banana in 30 days.”
A market that’s diversifying
Separate figures published by Apptopia in its February 2026 data brief describe a broader expansion and reshuffling in the GenAI chatbot app market. Apptopia’s brief says the GenAI chatbot app market increased 152% year over year since last January, and that Gemini’s market share rose from 14.7% in January 2025 to 25.2% in January 2026, while ChatGPT fell from 69.1% to 45.3%.
Apptopia’s brief also reports a different set of Grok metrics than the Reuters-cited dataset, saying Grok’s DAU market share hit 15.2% last month, up from 12% in December 2025. In the same brief, Apptopia said about 20% of AI users are using at least two apps, and its VP of Research Tom Grant said, “ChatGPT built the category, but as viable alternatives have scaled, users are naturally diversifying their toolkit.”
