Musk’s AI is ‘less popular’ in the US government

Reuters Citing the opinions of seven federal employees, three contract experts and a review of US government AI inventory documents, xAI’s Grok, the artificial intelligence company Musk merged into SpaceX in early February, is not mentioned much in the deployment system at federal agencies, except for the US Department of Defense.

The 2025 consolidated inventory records from federal agencies show more than 400 publicly available examples of AI use in government that name specific vendors. Of these, only three examples involve the use of xAI or Grok. In contrast, there were 234 mentions of OpenAI technology, including ChatGPT, Codex, and Microsoft Copilot; 33 examples related to Gemini or other Google products; or 26 examples related to Anthropic’s Claude – a product that was later ordered to stop using by the Trump administration.

According to the list, Grok is available to US federal agencies for eight months at a price of 42 cents per agency. This almost zero level is also applied by many other AI companies – a typical strategy to attract, from which another contract can be concluded at a higher price later.

The list is compiled by the US Office of Management Budget (OMB). Companies such as xAI, Google or OpenAI will sign contracts through the US General Services Administration (GSA).

xAI, OMB and GSA did not comment.

Theo Business InsiderOMB data raises the question of whether Grok can gain AI market share from leading products such as Claude or ChatGPT, especially when SpaceX prepares to carry out what is expected to be the largest IPO in history, with a valuation ambition of 1,750 billion USD.

Last month, xAI also failed in its bid to deploy Grok for the US Department of Veterans Affairs due to “not meeting the department’s requirements”, according to a source close to the matter. The US Department of Veterans Affairs declined to comment.

In the corporate environment in the US, the situation is no better. According to a report published late last year by web traffic monitoring company Netskope, Grok “did not gain significant traction”, with only 2/1,000 users of the product, down from the previous peak of 5/1,000 users. “Even for current users, the usage time is very short. Grok will not become popular among American businesses,” commented Ray Canzanese, CEO of Netskope.

Previous statistics also show that Grok is losing its position in the AI ​​race, according to WSJ. For example, according to analytics firm AppMagic, app downloads were down to about 8.3 million in April, down 58.5% from a record of more than 20 million in January. Research firm Recon Analytics’ survey of more than 260,000 US AI users found that Grok’s paying rate was virtually unchanged in the first four months of the year, at 0.174%, while ChatGPT reached 6%.

In the field of programming assistants, where there is the fiercest competition among AI companies, Grok is also rated as lagging behind. According to Erik Bradley, Research Director at market analysis company Enterprise Technology Research (ETR), Grok has virtually no growth in organizations and businesses. Meanwhile, Claude and Gemini usage skyrocketed. Surveying 500 people in March, ETR recorded that 48% of respondents said their businesses are and will use Claude, up from 21% over the previous year; 40% use Gemini, up from 27%; but only 7% are using or planning to use Grok, up from 4%.

However, OMB’s inventory document does not include the Pentagon, which has a $200 million agreement with xAI. In May, xAI became one of seven companies deployed on classified networks of the US Department of Defense.