Elon's ChatGPT Competitor Finally Got Its Own App

Ariel Ariel
2 minute read Jan. 17

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - TikTok is Gone!. Check out the full article for more insights.


Grok, X's AI, has finally landed as a standlone app in the US. I've been waiting for this since the model opened up through the X app back in 2023.

Why? Because as a standalone app it'll get discovery making it more competitive and pushing for more competition. And more competition is more better in my opinion.

FYI - This is a snippet from an 80+ page AI industry report we'll be publishing very son. Keep an eye out if you're in the space. Get in touch if you're a journalist and want early access.

Grok's new standalone app soft-launched in Australia at the tail end of December, then expanded to India, and eventually came to the US last week. As of right now, Grok is only available to download in six countries. Oh, and it's also only available on iOS and not Android - don't ask me why...

When Grok came to the US there was a massive push on X by Elon and other X folks to spread the word, including a push notification to all/some/many (I'm not too sure of the scope) X users - but unlike all other competitors the push was 100% organic. There were no paid ads in or out of the App Store.

Naturally, I was curious how a completely organic push would go so I compared the first week of downloads to Grok's competitors: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot.

Across all five launches, Grok ranks 4th, right above Claude. If you've been following me for long enough you know how I feel about Claude's mobile app - a big missed opportunity, so the bar wasn't high.

Our estimates show that Grok's standalone app was downloaded 184K times in its first week on the App Store in the US while Claude was downloaded 96K times. Looking up, however, it's Copilot from Microsoft that ranked 3rd, Gemini from Google that ranked 2nd, and the king - ChatGPT - that ranks 1st.

What's different about all three? They all kicked off with huge ad budgets while Grok's launch was completely organic. ChatGPT spent tons on Apple Search Ads, Google plastered the web and sent its sales force to promote Gemini, and Microsoft bought a Superbowl ad for Copilot. Grok didn't.

I see this launch as a big win for Grok, and having used the standalone app, I can already tell it could become ChatGPT's main rival within a few months - especially once it rolls out globally.

Which team are you on?

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.

Tagged: #ai

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