xAI directs European users’ complaints to a basement in Estonia
Technology company xAI has quietly moved its official European point of contact to a basement in Estonia, an investigation has revealed.
xAI, the company behind social media platform X and chatbot Grok, is currently in hot water in Europe, where authorities launched an investigation into Grok over suspicion that it was used to generate illegal content, including child sexual abuse material.
A new report by Follow the Money, an investigative journalism platform, sheds light on the steps xAI has taken in an apparent response to the probe.
The company updated its terms of service, adding a Brussels-based legal firm for non-EU companies as its new legal point of contact regarding the bloc’s online safety laws.
The firm, called the European Digital Services Representatives (EDSR), is owned by Belgian politician Olivier Willocx and lists the messaging service Telegram among its clients.
Moreover, xAI added an Estonian address to its terms of service in mid-February, as indicated by historical versions of its website.
The investigation, however, suggests that EDSR doesn’t have a registered presence in the building at this address. Neither xAI nor EDSR has actual offices or subsidiaries listed in the Estonian company register.
Most importantly, there doesn’t appear to be an office in the building with the number 35, as listed in the address, although there is a mailbox labeled 35 in the lobby.
The building owner told investigators that it did not rent mailboxes to firms without an office in the building and denied having any rental agreement with either xAI or EDSR.
Management director Gerly Kreek told Estonian media that the Number 35 is a locked room in the basement.
Follow the Money says that neither xAI nor EDSR responded to repeated requests for comment.
Grok caused an international uproar in early 2026, when X users started using the chatbot to generate nonconsensual sexually explicit images of women and children.
Over 11 days, Grok produced an estimated 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 of children, according to Center for Counting Digital Hate calculations.
In 2025, the European Commission issued X a $140 million fine for failure to comply with the bloc’s digital rules, accusing the platform of deceptive design of its “blue checkmark” and violating the rule regarding the platform’s ads repository.
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