I thought that. Then, I remembered PayPal straight up paying people to use their platform. We saw how that worked out.

So, the question is whether they should pay to generate demand in a new market. Then, who to pay and how much?

I'll also note that OpenAI took the market by offering an expensive service for free (ChatGPT). Then, they offered a monthly plan that may or may not have been profitable. One could argue that OpenAI has been paying people to use its service for a long time.

I also wonder if xAI gets something out of it. For instance, they might get all the conversations with the AI. I believe ChatGPT similarly put free, user conversations to use internally in ways that boosted their paid apps. xAI might have some plays like that.