Grok adds third-party connectors (Vercel, Canva, Gamma, S&P Global); ships Grok 4.3 and Grok Skills

xAI's productivity push moves Grok from chat assistant to platform. The new third-party connectors with Vercel (deploy from chat), Canva (design), Gamma (presentations), and S&P Global (financial data) put Grok in direct competition with ChatGPT GPTs and Claude MCP servers as a workflow hub. The integration with OpenClaw — an open-source agent platform — adds developer credibility.

Grok 4.3, launched earlier in May, ships as a cost-efficient flagship: a 1-million-token context window, native video input, and substantially lower per-token pricing than Grok 4. Grok Skills enables persistent custom expertise (a Skills marketplace is implied), and Grok Build 0.1 is a coding-specialized model that's already being routed into OpenCode via Grok/X Premium subscriptions (per @xai on X). xAI also confirmed Wall Street pilots: Apollo Global, Morgan Stanley, and others are testing Grok internally, a revenue ramp timed to the SpaceX IPO narrative.

The competitive ledger is more mixed. Reuters reported Grok has failed to gain traction in US federal government deals, a setback for the SpaceX/xAI growth story. And Azure Foundry adding Grok 4.3 to its Model Router this week was a notable hyperscaler validation, even as government doors stay closed.

Watch next: Wall Street pilot conversion rates, Grok 5 timing (xAI has hinted at AGI-level claims), and whether Grok Skills draws a real developer community vs. ChatGPT GPTs.