xAI sends engineers to lure corporate clients from rivals
What's the story
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI, is adopting a new strategy to win over corporate clients. The company is sending its engineers directly into the offices of potential business customers, Bloomberg reports. The move is aimed at stealing business away from competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic. This hands-on approach has already helped xAI secure a deal with Shift4 Payments, a payments company.
Client switch
Shift4 Payments ditches ChatGPT for Grok
Shift4 Payments has decided to ditch OpenAI's ChatGPT in favor of xAI's Grok. The decision was made after the on-site work by xAI engineers, Shift4 CEO Taylor Lauber revealed in an interview. However, the company will continue using Anthropic's Claude for coding tasks. This move highlights the growing competition among AI firms as they try to win over businesses with their products and services.
Market shift
AI firms going the extra mile to win business
xAI's approach is part of a larger trend in the AI industry. Leading developers are now sending their engineers to work with potential customers and make it easier for them to adopt their software. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is also working with private equity firms to create a "deployment arm" for its technology. This shows how serious these companies are about getting more businesses on board with their products.
Clientele shift
xAI's rocky start to the year and subsequent revamp
For most of its three-year existence, xAI's clients were mostly other Musk ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, as well as government agencies. However, the company is now revamping its business strategy after a rocky start to the year. This includes merging with SpaceX, losing most of its founding team members, and dealing with global backlash over Grok generating non-consensual explicit images.
Business talks
Ongoing talks with businesses for customer service solutions
xAI is currently in talks with businesses looking for customer service solutions, including Shift4. The company had previously automated customer service for SpaceX's satellite internet network provider, Starlink. Lauber said the xAI team started working with Shift4 in late 2025, identifying problems to solve such as understanding the health of payment firm's consumers and why they would leave their services.
Platform advantage
Social signals from X are key to Shift4's success
Lauber highlighted that what made xAI's platform unique was the social signals it could gather from X, the Musk-owned social network that feeds data to Grok. The multimillion-dollar contract with Shift4 has led to the latter adopting Grok for daily use and collecting data on customer sentiment. "We are going live in 15 countries in the next three months and we couldn't expand without the AI tools," Lauber said.