CEO & Co-Founder, Gopuff
Gopuff Chose xAI For Cost and Quality, Says Co-CEO
As SpaceXAI heads toward its IPO, investors are betting on more than rockets and chatbots: the company says enterprise AI represents a $26 trillion opportunity. But can Grok actually win corporate customers? One of the few companies putting it to work is Gopuff, which built its new AI shopping assistant on xAI's models. Gopuff co-CEO Rafael Ilishayev joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech."
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About Rafael Ilishayev
In a June 2026 interview on Bloomberg Technology, Gopuff co-CEO Rafael Ilishayev discussed the company's partnership with xAI and the launch of their new AI shopping assistant, called Go. Ilishayev said Gopuff chose xAI because it was "the lowest cost provider" and offered high-quality voice and image technology. He noted that the partnership involved a ten- to eleven-month codevelopment process and that xAI was "cutting edge" in both voice and image generation. Ilishayev stated that Gopuff considered other AI providers but ultimately selected xAI due to cost, product quality, and willingness to collaborate. Ilishayev reported early consumer metrics from Go's first week, saying "basket size is up and frequency within the first week is up." He described customer interactions with the assistant, including a conversation with a mother saying "my kid is sick" and a user hosting a barbecue, characterizing these as "very special" relationships that he believes "are the ones that are gonna win and lead to ultimately better KPIs."
Transcript (10 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
The company says enterprise AI represents a $26.5 trillion opportunity, but can Crook actually win corporate customers? One of the few companies putting it to work is Gopuff, which built its new AI shopping assistant on xAI's models. Joining us now is Gopuff CEO, Rafael Ilishayev. It's a great case study. Right? I think a lot of people read the prospectus and were like, okay, the future of xAI is enterprise AI, but they have struggled a little to get people to use the models in a meaningful way. You are. Just explain the basics of the relationship and what you've actually done with the technology.
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Rafael Ilishayev0:38
Yeah. Ed, Caroline, thank you so much for having me. So over the last thirteen years, Gopuff has built infrastructure to be the fastest and most affordable player in delivery. And our partnership with xAI and the product that we co-developed called Go solves the final friction point that we really had, which is the consumer shopping experience. So we thought about this differently than I think a lot of other folks. It's not just that LLM wrapper that's built within our app, but in fact, a co-developed experience where it's a whole new consumer product where you could shop via voice, you could talk to it, have total conversation like you would have with your best friend. Go will build your cart. So if it knows enough about you, it'll actually develop and build a whole cart. And it has this TikTok-style scrolling experience where you can scroll and discover new products that are hyper-personalized and cared for you. So this is a whole new experience that we co-developed together with xAI over the last year.
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Interviewer1:40
And, Rafael, what's interesting is when you're using data from x, you'll know that I'm all in on the next in five game on Saturday, and suddenly I'm being offered chicken wings or I'm being offered chips or whatever it might be because I'm over in Gopuff on that moment on the Saturday. But from actually embedding within x and within Grok, did you push away other relationships? Did you decide, no thanks, OpenAI, no thanks, Anthropic? Did you look at doing it with competitors?
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Rafael Ilishayev2:08
You know, this kind of relationship that we had and the kind of product that we wanted to build, this wasn't just a plug and play that we could have done with anyone. So we looked for folks that had the right technology, and xAI has amongst the best technology both for voice and image, and a partner that was willing to co-develop this whole new consumer shopping experience for us. So this was a long, ten, eleven month process that we co-developed together with a partner that was willing to work with us, even as early as this morning, talking with our engineers and co-developing this thing together to make it even better. So we were looking for a partner that had the right technology, which xAI is, I think, cutting edge and the best both in voice and in image generation, and a partner that was willing to co-develop this new product together.
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Interviewer2:58
Could you talk a little bit about how the economics of it work? Like, how does xAI price things with you? It sounds also a bit like you get good access to the forward deployed engineers, like daily access. All of that is a big factor right now because everyone is counting the cost of tokens.
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Rafael Ilishayev3:14
Yeah. So it's a strategic relationship that we built together with xAI from day one. And the way that we thought about the scaling is we wanted a provider that can provide a super high quality product both across voice and image and is arguably the lowest cost provider. So we built a relationship that scales. They are the lowest cost provider.
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Interviewer3:40
You benchmarked against OpenAI and Anthropic on the cost as well?
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Rafael Ilishayev3:45
Yeah. We looked at a lot of players when we did this, and cost was one of the factors here. But the quality of the product and the willingness to co-develop this together, all of that gave us a lot of confidence to work together with xAI. And I think the product speaks for itself. If you play with it, I think it's second to none from a consumer AI experience.
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Interviewer4:08
I mean, Rafael, it's interesting reporting out over at Wall Street Journal. For example, there's a thought that OpenAI might be doing some drastic price cuts in particular. Basically, the cost of its product, people who've been wonderfully token maxing and suddenly realizing how expensive that is, and they want to do that perhaps ahead of competitors like Anthropic. Are you seeing return on such AI investment? Is it really driving growth for the business?
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Rafael Ilishayev4:32
You know, we're a week in to Go launching, and I'll tell you a lot of the consumer metrics really early on are great. Basket size is up and frequency within the first week is up. But what's even more special is the kind of conversations that our consumers are having with Go. We saw a conversation earlier today with a mom saying, hey, my kid is sick, can you help me? Or a conversation a few days ago with someone asking, hey, I'm hosting a barbecue for six people, can you help me? And that kind of relationship that we're building with the customer is very special. And I think those kind of relationships are the ones that are gonna win and lead to ultimately better KPIs across the board.