Grok Bot user quotas exhausted early; Musk says service costs are too high to sustain

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Grok Bot users complain that their quotas are exhausted early; Musk admits AI compute is "too expensive to burn" and cannot be sustained!

Cailianshe Huang Junzhi, Editor Lin Qi 2026-11-03 08:00

① Musk said that the cost of the Grok Bot service is too high and unsustainable; ② Grok Bot's daily active users grew from less than 100,000 in early September to more than 600,000 by October 26; ③ The economic conditions of the AI industry show that even strong demand does not always support the AI tools it sells.

Cailianshe, November 3 (Editor Huang Junzhi) — SpaceX CEO and world's richest man Elon Musk recently said that because the service cost of the company's AI assistant Grok Bot is too high, it cannot achieve "unlimited use." This highlights that as demand for the service rises, this AI business is facing financial pressure.

Musk posted on a social media platform, saying, "Relative to revenue, the cost of the Grok Bot service is too high and unsustainable."

Musk's post was in response to users' complaints that "the weekly quota is being consumed much faster than usual." Previously, multiple Grok Bot subscribers reported that their usage quotas had recently been consumed noticeably faster, and some users had exhausted their entire quota several days before the weekly reset.

One user posted, saying, "My Grok Bot usage quota has reached 100%, and there are still 4 days until the next reset, whereas previously I usually would not use up the quota." The user then asked Musk whether the Grok Bot usage quota could be reset.

Grok Bot is an AI agent launched by SpaceX in August this year. It relies on a virtual computer to complete various tasks such as shopping for people. The product is available in multiple tiers, ranging from a free version to a $200-per-month plan. All tiers have usage limits that reset weekly. SpaceX and other AI agents such as Meta's Muse all use this approach to prevent users from generating huge compute bills.

The above incident highlights one of the biggest questions in the AI revolution: whether user demand is sufficient to support corporate operations. At least in Musk's case, it turns out that demand is not the problem; cost is.

User demand goes without saying. According to previous media reports, its daily active users had increased for 16 consecutive days, setting the longest growth streak since launch, with daily active users growing from less than 100,000 in early September to more than 600,000 by October 26. Previously, Musk also publicly said on X that Grok Bot's user growth rate was faster than any product he had ever seen.

However, user demand is only one side of the AI market equation. Companies that produce complex and expensive models must generate revenue to offset their rising costs. The AI industry is still in its infancy and remains immature, and its economic conditions show that even strong demand does not always support the AI tools it sells. This is especially true at current price levels — whether on the user side (low prices) or the enterprise computing side (high prices).

This is why the revenue problem is increasingly critical, and why Musk's admission is so important. The AI industry is facing real-world constraints. But Grok Bot's "restrictive measures" make users and tech observers feel it is unfair, and raise concerns about SpaceX's business.

"Two weeks ago, Grok Bot was a powerful engine of SpaceXai revenue growth and achieved remarkable success. Now, it is unsustainable and has even begun to lose money (???)" former xAI employee Benjamin De Kraker posted on X.

Other commenters pointed out that a post Musk published a few days ago now seems quite ironic, saying that "with the arrival of the age of superintelligence, saving money for the distant future is meaningless."

X is full of complaints from Grok users: "Elon has gone back on his word again." Musk, in response to a comment, helplessly admitted: "Just out of reason."

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