Why is xAI's new Grok 3 model not available in Europe?

xAI’s new Grok 3 model has finally arrived.

Elon Musk, xAI’s billionaire boss, said that the model is “scary smart.” Grok 3’s capacity was doubled in just 92 days with 200,000 GPUs and outperforms models such as Gemini 2 Pro and GPT-4o in benchmark tests.

Initially available only to Premium subscribers, Grok 3 is now accessible to all X (formerly Twitter) users, allowing free users to send up to 10 messages every two hours.

But yet, just like xAI’s Grok chatbot, it is not available in Europe. Why?

When you open Grok’s website (grok.com), you’ll be greeted with a “coming soon” message for EU and UK users.

“We are diligently working to extend our services to these regions, prioritizing compliance with local data protection and privacy laws to ensure your information remains safely secure,” the warning reads.

It’s the same old story of why Europe lags behind in AI, while competitors in the US and China are rapidly advancing in the field. Grok 3 not being available in Europe is just one example of this trend. For instance, OpenAI’s Sora and ChatGPT Deep Research also faced similar limitations. The same issue applies to Threads, Instagram’s “Twitter killer” app.

A study from Digital Europe last year found that Europe is behind in key tech areas like AI and semiconductors, mainly because of a big gap in investment. European rules, like GDPR, protect privacy and ensure ethical standards but also slow down innovation and growth. OpenAI’s Sam Altman pointed out that the problem isn’t Europe’s fault while praising Deep Search.

Grok 3’s release comes as OpenAI prepares to launch GPT-4.5 and GPT-5, which will simplify the AI experience with a unified model interface without a “model picker.”