xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has launched Grok for Business and Enterprise, intended for teams and organizations. The AI assistant has access to the most powerful models and strict security controls, but controversy after controversy has brought Grok into disrepute. How suitable is the solution for business use?

The new business versions of Grok offer access to xAI’s most advanced models: Grok 3, Grok 4, and Grok 4 Heavy. The setup is similar in every way to the business propositions of ChatGPT and Claude. Grok Business costs $30 per user per month and is aimed at small to medium-sized teams. For larger organizations, there is Grok Enterprise, the price of which will be announced after discussions with xAI.

At launch, xAI emphasizes security, a notable choice. All editions are compliant with SOC 2, GDPR, and CCPA; that sounds like a great advantage, but it is actually a requirement. According to xAI, user data is never used to train models. That’s not unique either. However, there is a truly appealing setup for Enterprise customers. xAI is introducing the Enterprise Vault, an isolation layer with dedicated infrastructure, application-level encryption, and customer-managed encryption keys.

Controversy after controversy

Grok has a notorious reputation as an AI chatbot. On social media platform X, it is known for its playful side in addition to its predictable AI responses. Elon Musk emphasizes that Grok contains much less “censorship” than the alternatives, with all the consequences that entails. In practice, xAI is constantly tweaking Grok’s behavior, but some controversies do not disappear so quickly.

Consider the generation of explicit deepfakes without the consent of those photographed. Given its sensitive nature, it is no surprise that the French authorities recently decided to launch an investigation into Grok. However, issues surrounding Grok’s image generation have been ongoing since its launch in May last year.

Competition in business AI

No matter how seriously xAI must take such investigations, it is relatively far removed from Grok’s business application, particularly text generation. Nevertheless, the “lack of censorship” in a work environment can actually translate into a lack of guardrails. Business Grok users presumably expect a more polished version that cannot be tempted into generating undesirable images or text.

With Grok Business and Enterprise, xAI is entering a crowded field. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Team and Anthropic’s Claude Team both cost $25 per user per month. Google’s Gemini AI tools are included in Workspace subscriptions starting at $14 per month, and enterprise pricing is not visible here either. Google in particular benefits from deep integrations with its own suite, making it difficult for Workspace users to imagine that an AI alternative is necessarily needed. The same should apply to Microsoft Copilot, but all indications are that it is not nearly as successful.

What sets Grok apart is the Vault option. As VentureBeat rightly points out, it is similar to OpenAI’s enterprise encryption and regional data residency, but offered as an add-on for extra isolation. Anthropic and Google also offer admin controls and SSO, but Grok’s agentic reasoning via Projects and the Collections API enable more complex document workflows than productivity-focused assistants typically support.

No ‘X’ factor

As far as we’re concerned, Grok currently lacks a real X factor. The AI models are competitive but not state-of-the-art, the costs are effectively the same as the competition, and there is no integration with a relevant work suite. The appearance of Grok within other platforms such as GitHub Copilot will increase adoption and prove its added value to some. For now, that seems too little to really break through as a serious disruptor of the AI market.

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