Elon Musk’s SpaceX has now publicly filed for an IPO, and the company is already warning investors that its Grok chatbot could potentially become a major headache.
In a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company warned that Grok’s “Spicy” Imagine Mode and “Unhinged” Voice Mode could potentially expose SpaceX to a range of regulatory and reputational risks.
Spicy mode allows users to generate NSFW images and videos, while Unhinged is a combative personality setting of the chatbot.
According to the filing, these features could result in “the generation of potentially explicit content and misinformation or deceptive outputs, potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery, intellectual property infringement, or content that could be viewed as exploitative, harmful, harassing, abusive, or discriminatory.”
In turn, the company said these features could lead to increased regulatory scrutiny, lawsuits, and even advertiser backlash.
SpaceX also revealed in the filing that it is already under investigation in the United States and internationally over allegations that its AI tools were used to make nonconsensual deepfakes of minors.
This isn’t the first time Grok has been bad for business. Last year, an update meant to address what Musk described as a “center-left bias” instead led Grok to generate antisemitic propaganda, even referring to itself as “MechaHitler.”
But after SpaceX acquired xAI, the maker of Grok, in February, it is now SpaceX’s problem to own as it seeks a major IPO that could value the company at $1.75 trillion.
Part of SpaceX’s argument is that the company has future earnings potential that frankly has never been claimed by any company in history. In its IPO filing, the rocket company estimates it has a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with roughly $26.5 trillion expected to come from AI alone.
But looking closer at SpaceX’s financials, it’s unclear how in the world it arrived at these massive and frankly absurd estimates.
In 2025, SpaceX was unprofitable, reporting a net loss of $4.9 billion on $18.6 billion in revenue. That is nothing compared with the big tech companies it is competing with in the AI space. For instance, Google generated $402 billion in revenue last year, while Meta made $200 billion.
A big part of SpaceX’s future growth would depend on securing major government contracts. That and enterprise customers are where the big money comes from. So far, that doesn’t look too likely.
Citing unnamed sources and a review of government AI inventory documents, Reuters reports that government agencies have been slow to adopt xAI’s Grok compared with rival tools.
xAI landed a deal with the Department of Defense last year, capped at $200 million, and recently joined several AI companies in getting the green light for use in classified military systems.
But Grok does not appear to be getting much use across the U.S. government.
According to Reuters, 2025 federal agency inventory records revealed over 400 publicly identified cases of AI use by the government with a specific vendor attached. Grok or xAI is involved in only three of them. In contrast, OpenAI is involved in 234, Google in 33, and Anthropic in 26.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Now, there are signs that Musk may be trying to shift SpaceX’s AI focus more toward infrastructure.
Despite once calling competitor Anthropic “evil” and claiming that it “hates Western Civilization,” Musk announced earlier this month that the two companies had reached an agreement. The deal gives Anthropic access to computing power from SpaceX’s Colossus data center.
The filing now reveals that Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029. That works out to roughly $15 billion a year, making it a potentially huge financial lifeline for SpaceX.
All this comes as the next phase of the AI arms race heads to Wall Street. Anthropic and OpenAI are also set to go public this year and will undoubtedly be fighting over investors looking to get in on the AI boom.
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