What Musk said and who he replied to
Grok Bot costs the company more than it earns, and now Elon Musk himself is saying so. On Sunday, November 1, he wrote on X: “The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue.” The statement was relayed by SKAI, which describes it as the first clear explanation for the pressure on usage limits.
The reply came to a user asking for the weekly limit to be reset. According to Techblog.gr, the user had exhausted their limit with four days left until it reset. As with other AI systems, each user has a specific “package” of work, and every request depletes it.
SKAI adds that Musk did not clarify the actual cost, the tool's revenue, or whether changes to the plans are being planned. He has also not announced whether limits will be restored for those who lost them earlier than expected.
Meters that shoot up and user complaints
Techgear.gr writes that reactions escalated over the weekend. Developers and ordinary users saw their usage meters climb sharply, from 33% to 66% or even straight to 100% overnight. Others described a jump from 30% to 100% without having the tool active.
The Doge Norway account on X asked Musk to reset its meter, after its limit ran out four days before renewal. Similar messages appeared on the forum of Cursor, a code development environment that integrates Grok Bot. There, the meters moved erratically between 77% and 100%.
Techgear.gr also notes that the company does not give exact figures for the limits. Those paying subscriptions of up to 200 dollars a month feel, it writes, that the rules have changed without explanation.
Why an AI agent costs so much
Grok Bot is not a simple chatbot. It is an AI agent, that is, a digital assistant that takes on complex jobs on its own, even when the user is away from the computer. SKAI writes that xAI introduced it in a trial beta version on August 11, 2026. It has its own computing environment in the cloud, a browser and tools. It can do research, manage email, build websites and coordinate other assistants. Each task requires many successive steps and continuous use of resources.
According to Techgear.gr, the system picks the appropriate language model on its own and integrates tools such as Claude, Midjourney and Suno. The user sees only a single overall consumption figure and does not know what pushed it up. SKAI adds that, under the newer billing rules, Grok Bot shares the weekly limit with the Grok and Cursor apps. Different rules apply to older Cursor plans.
The signs were already visible in October. In the SpaceX shareholder update for the third quarter of 2026, Gwynne Shotwell reported 800,000 active paying users weekly. Musk had said then that the tool could consume most of the company's computing power, Techgear.gr writes.
The sources differ on the name of the group: Techblog.gr speaks of SpaceXSI, which includes the rocket company, the AI business and X, while SKAI and Techgear.gr refer to xAI. According to Techblog.gr, the tool is available only to subscribers.
The problem does not concern only Musk. Techgear.gr writes, citing industry sources, that OpenAI will merge the ChatGPT and Codex limits next month. Developers who use both will exhaust them faster. Meta, according to the same source, says nothing about the cost of Muse. Techblog.gr adds that OpenAI's Dots is restricted to the most expensive accounts, while Muse also has a free version.
