Elon Musk said he bought Twitter because civilization needed a “common digital town square.” Four years on, the platform functions more like an ongoing group chat for Silicon Valley’s AI enthusiasts and professionals.
Why it matters
Two years ago, X faced competition from many new entrants. Today, it keeps relevance by becoming more niche: AI researchers, executives and commentators use it to debate, explain and sometimes break news about artificial intelligence before other parts of the information ecosystem catch up.
State of play
New model launches, research papers, demos, hiring moves, executive departures and technical disputes bounce across X in real time. A recent viral example came when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced his resignation on X and laid out safety concerns in a thread — the post has more than 100 million views. Another Anthropic employee posted that he believes there is greater than a 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade. Those posts triggered an intense news cycle about the risks of scaling AI, and both began as X posts by company employees.
Background
The AI community, particularly the researchers who drive progress at frontier labs, has long gravitated to X for sharing ideas. In 2025, Anthropic AI researcher Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” in an X post, helping to name one of the trends in enterprise AI adoption.
Executives are also increasingly using the platform: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang launched his account in July with a post supporting open AI models. Wired reports that researchers from Chinese AI labs are using X to reach new audiences, which helped accelerate interest in open models.
Live shows and investments
Large investments in live video have made X a home for new live tech shows such as “TBPN,” “Stabledash,” “MTS Live” and others. While these programs do not always match cable TV or top creators on other platforms in raw viewership, they attract a high-value audience of AI insiders. According to the Financial Times, TBPN was acquired by OpenAI for a rumored “low hundreds of millions.”
Limits and competition
AI enthusiasts remain a small subset of X’s total user base, and the platform faces significant competition from Meta’s Threads for everyday users. Similarweb data show Threads had 141.5 million daily active mobile users in January 2026, compared with X’s 125 million.
Ownership and product direction
Musk did not create an “AI Twitter”: researchers and tech figures were already influential on the network before his acquisition. However, Musk closed the Twitter purchase one month before OpenAI released ChatGPT, which helped catalyze an AI race among participants who were already connected on the platform.
Big tech leaders such as Jensen Huang and Apple’s new CEO John Ternus are now joining X to communicate major AI announcements. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta also returned to posting on X this year after leaving his account largely dormant since its 2009 creation.
X as an AI product
X itself is turning into an AI product. Musk’s xAI acquired X and said the companies would combine data, models, computing power and distribution. Grok, the xAI model, can use a connected X account to read timelines and follow platform activity.
Bottom line
Under Musk, X has evolved into a real-time, highly focused forum for AI researchers and enthusiasts. That role may not matter to most users of the platform, but it matters to some of the most influential innovators in the world.
