Telegram received $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, Musk invests in Grok, and TON pumps 20%.

Pavel Durov, founder of messaging app Telegram, announced $300 million in cash and equity from xAI and will make Grok available to a billion users on the platform. (Synopsis: Vietnamese government announces ban on Telegram: Fight crime!) Encrypted communications are not in line with national security) (Background supplement: Telegram founder: the government wants encryption software to force the installation of "back doors", even if it does not hesitate to withdraw from the market ) Pavel Durov, founder of social giant Telegram, said on X tonight at 08:04 that Telegram and xAI have reached a one-year cooperation agreement to integrate Grok into Telegram's app and promote it to its more than 1 billion users. In exchange, xAI will pay Telegram $300 million, including cash and shares, and Telegram will receive a 50% share of xAI subscription revenue sold through the Telegram platform. Telegram and xAI have agreed to a 1-year partnership to distribute Grok to Telegram’s billion+ users and integrate it into its apps. Telegram will receive $300M in cash and equity from xAI, plus 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram. Together, we win! pic.twitter.com/JxTNQr4MTy — Pavel Durov (@durov) May 28, 2025 Telegram is on good news today, only hours after it was reported that TG will issue at least $1.5 billion in new bonds and has received new bonds from Citadel, BlackRock and Subscription commitments from heavyweight investment institutions such as Mubadala. Incentivized by this, the TON token jumped more than 20% in the past four hours, and is now trading at $3.616 before the deadline. Strong Operating Data and Financial Reversal Attract Investment As for investors' continued support for Telegram, it is mainly due to the strong operating performance of its platform and significantly improved financial position. According to Affmaven and Resourcera, as of March 2025, Telegram's monthly active users (MAU) have exceeded 1 billion, an annual increase of 5.3%, while the number of daily active users has remained at about 5 at (DAU) billion levels. Over the past five years, its MAU growth rate has been as high as 137.5%. The SOAX report further notes that Telegram has more than 15 million paid subscribers, doubling from the same period last year, reflecting user engagement and the platform's monetization potential. Financially, Telegram successfully turned a loss into a profit in 2024. The company disclosed annual revenue of $1.4 billion in 2024 and realized a profit of about $540 million, in stark contrast to a loss of $173 million and revenue of $342 million in 2023. Its revenue mainly comes from advertising (25 million US dollars ) and premium subscription services (292 million US dollars ). The company expects revenue to exceed $2 billion in 2025, with a profit of $700 million. Part of the proceeds will be used to redeem old debt issued in 2021 and due in March next year, which will help optimize its debt structure. Extended reading: The era of ordinary people making money with Telegram begins: gift market launched, limited-time dynamic upgrade, fully automatic channel translation Legal challenges for CEOs Despite the company's solid fundamentals, the legal issues facing TG CEO Pavel Durov in France remain in the spotlight. Durov faces preliminary charges over Telegram's alleged failure to adequately cooperate with the authorities' investigation into illegal content such as child pornography on the platform. Telegram and Durov themselves disagree. Durov was briefly detained and investigated in Paris in August 2024 and has now been released with permission to leave France. Speaking publicly at a recent conference in Oslo, he said: "We comply with all binding legal requirements. So to this day, we don't understand what we're doing wrong." Even so, major investors such as Citadel, BlackRock and Mubadala chose to support Telegram's bond offering, indicating that they are more focused on Telegram as a high-growth messaging platform, after all, traffic and channels are king. Related reports Notcoin founder: The click-to-earn model is dead, what is the next step in the development of Telegram games? Telegram Mini App Game Analysis: Is it conducive to player participation in the ecology or Pay to Win? "Telegram received $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, Musk threw money to push Grok, TON jumped 20%" This article was first published in BlockTempo's "Dynamic Trend - The Most Influential Blockchain News Media".