Elon Musk publicly betrays Russian billionaire over $300,000,000 deal in painfully awkward interaction

Elon Musk has publicly rejected a $300 million deal with a Russian billionaire.

The world's richest man may be running out of high-profile allies. Just recently, the tech mogul made his final exit from the White House, stepping down from his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While he managed to push through sweeping reductions, a series of missteps - and his blunt approach - led to growing public disapproval.

Hours before leaving, the Tesla CEO said he was 'disappointed' with Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' that 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.'

Now, back to focusing on his business empire, Musk hopes to turn around the backlash at his Tesla company since his priorities went political. Meanwhile, X experienced an outage last weekend, and Starlink's launch didn't go quite as planned.

At the centre of the latest drama, he's publicly rejected a major AI partnership with another influential figure.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who was once close with Musk, announced that xAI's chatbot Grok would be coming to Telegram.

In a statement, the Russian tech entrepreneur claimed the deal was sealed and valued at around $300 million (£223 million), including both cash and equity.

"This summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market," Durov said.

"Elon Musk and I have agreed to a one-year partnership to bring xAI’s Grok to our billion+ users and integrate it across all Telegram apps."

But Musk immediately contradicted him. "No deal has been signed," Musk wrote bluntly on X (formerly Twitter), a statement seen by their combined 221 million followers.

Durov quickly tried to clear things up, replying: "True. Agreed in principle, but formalities are pending."

The proposed agreement would mean Telegram's one billion users have access to Grok for one year.

In return, Durov would get £223 million in hard cash and stock, along with half the revenue from any Grok subscriptions sold through the platform.

Announcing the partnership, the Telegram founder noted that it would significantly ‘strengthen’ the platform's financial position.

He added: "We will receive $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, plus 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram."

The terms may appear unbalanced, but the benefits seemed clear.

With generative AI companies scrambling to grow massive R&D costs and scale fast, xAI could see huge benefits from expanding into Telegram's customer base.