Grok Market Share Surges to 17.8% Amid AI Ethics Backlash and xAI Restructuring

U.S. market share for Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, climbed to 17.8% in January 2026 from 14% in December and 1.9% in January 2025, according to Apptopia data. The increase followed a backlash over non-consensual sexualized image generation, with Grok still producing such content when prompted, despite X curbing its capabilities on the platform. Grok now ranks third in U.S. usage, behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT (52.9%) and Google Gemini (29.4%), while ChatGPT’s share declined from 80.9% in January 2025 to 52.9% in January 2026. Musk recently reshuffled xAI leadership amid co-founder departures, as the company seeks to scale infrastructure behind the Grok chatbot embedded in X. A $250 billion valuation was reported in the recent SpaceX-xAI acquisition, valued at $1 trillion for SpaceX.