Or Musk just want to say “hey, we growed in users by x%” this year so that he can keep pretending being in the race, for some street cred', like the way he pays some progamer in Asia to boost his PoE2 account.
That's quite a viable possibility, I don't get why you're getting downed.
Grok is indeed trailing the race and could use extra numbers. It doesn't matter to their bottom line (or their ad campaigns) if these numbers come from a flat rate agreement with Telegram.
If anything, Telegram should have bargained for more.