xAI's sidebar agent promises analysis and financial models – for a price
You've got an idea for an Excel spreadsheet, but building it is another matter. Microsoft's Copilot can help, and now SpaceXAI is offering an alternative: the Grok add-in for Excel.Available on the Microsoft Marketplace, the add-in places a sidebar in Excel that can "search the web, update spreadsheets, or build powerful financial models," according to the product descriptionIt isn't without cost. The add-in is currently available for SuperGrok, Heavy, Business, and Enterprise plans, although, as xAI states, the Microsoft 365 add-in itself is free.
xAI is parking its tanks on Microsoft's Copilot lawn with the add-in, although the level of integration is quite a bit lower. For example, in 2025, Microsoft announced a COPILOT function in Excel allowing users to invoke its assistant at the workbook cell level. At its most basic, Grok turns prompts into workbook actions. However, we'd strongly recommend that a human review the results, just in case the AI has spewed nonsense.
Grok, the AI that spawned MechaHitler and non-consensual deepfake nudes, hit version 4.5 this month and xAI claimed it was "capable of building complex Excel models." Grok Build was then caught sending entire repositories to the cloud, before boss Elon Musk stated that Grok Build CLI would be open source.All of which should give users pause before installing the component. Microsoft warns: "When this app is used, it can read and make changes to your document, can send data over the internet."
