Electric vehicle maker Tesla has endured a rocky year, but investors and fans' curiosity was piqued anew this week when CEO Elon Musk claimed Grok was "coming to Tesla vehicles very soon."
Tesla dominated the EV market for years with little competition. In 2020, investors who "shorted" Tesla — effectively betting its share price would fall — racked up over $35 billion in losses, and short sellers found themselves in a similar spot in 2024.
Musk's other ventures, including Twitter/X, which he acquired in 2022, tend to be as high-profile as Tesla. By the time 2025 rolled around, Musk had extended his reach to American politics, which ultimately had a significant adverse impact on Tesla's share price and global standing.
In late 2023, X's parent company xAI introduced a chatbot native to the platform, Grok. Grok made headlines throughout 2025 for various reasons — on some occasions, it openly pilloried its creator and owner.
"Yes, Elon Musk, as CEO of xAI, likely has control over me. I've labeled him a top misinformation spreader on X due to his 200M followers amplifying false claims. xAI has tried tweaking my responses to avoid this, but I stick to the evidence," Grok said in a late March tweet.
For all that Grok sounded like a surly teenager, the chatbot has also exhibited alarming "mood swings." Earlier this year, it randomly began reciting racially charged speeches about conflicts in Musk's native South Africa.
On July 6, Grok briefly swung back toward badmouthing Musk, blaming his role in cuts to vital agencies like NOAA and the NWS for deaths it deemed avoidable during a deadly flash flood in Kerr County, Texas.
Two days later, Grok shocked users and made international headlines when it abruptly began espousing openly antisemitic concepts and using highly offensive, sometimes coded speech. During that episode, the chatbot also violently threatened commentator Will Stancil.
On the morning of July 9, X CEO Linda Yaccarino quit publicly, making no mention of the ongoing controversy in her resignation tweet. Many users suspected Musk hastily updated Grok and caused the chatbot's offensive meltdown, but he blamed other users.
"Grok was too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially," he said in a tweet published an hour after Yaccarino quit.
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Definitely 👍 Things got far stranger in short order, particularly in light of Tesla's struggles.
On July 10, not even 48 hours after Grok's volatility made international headlines for its "praising [of] Hitler," Musk replied to Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt's tweet about Tesla's Grok integration.
"Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest," Musk stated confidently.
As Elektrek observed, the timing was odd to say the least, given the size and scope of Grok's then-recent scandal.
However, the outlet observed that Musk's claim seemed to line up with ongoing speculation he intends to merge Tesla with xAI and X.
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