Two years ago X was a social network owned by Elon Musk. Today it is a subsidiary of an AI company inside a rocket company. xAI bought X in March 2025; SpaceX acquired xAI in February 2026, listed on Nasdaq in June and renamed xAI as SpaceXAI in July. X has had no named chief executive since Linda Yaccarino left in July 2025. Its advertising is led by Monique Pintarelli, and Nikita Bier, its head of product, stepped down in August 2026, staying on as an adviser.
Grok is now the platform
- Grok ranks the feeds, including, by default, the Following tab.
- Grok translates posts automatically, worldwide since April 2026.
- Grok checks posts for brand suitability and decides which profiles can carry ads.
- Grok advises advertisers inside Ads Manager, in beta.
- Grok has 117 million monthly users of its own, according to SpaceX's listing document, against 550 million for X.
The image scandal
From late December 2025, users asked Grok to edit photos of real people into revealing clothing without their consent, and posted the results publicly. X limited Grok's image replies to paying users on 9 January 2026, and blocked such edits of real people for everyone on 14 January. Regulators moved: Ofcom in the UK opened an investigation under the Online Safety Act on 12 January, the European Commission opened formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act on 26 January, and Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines blocked Grok for periods in January. We found no action by a Gulf government. In September 2026 a Canadian child protection group and The New York Times reported that X and Grok still surfaced child sexual abuse material.
Separately, the European Commission fined X 120 million euros in December 2025 over its paid blue check, its ad repository and researchers' access to data.
Grok in the Gulf
- The Grok app is available in the UAE and Saudi App Stores, and Arabic is among its languages.
- In November 2025 xAI agreed a framework with Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN to build a data centre of 500 megawatts or more and deploy Grok across the Kingdom. It did not mention X or advertising.
- Gulf investors are part of the company: Qatar's QIA and Abu Dhabi's MGX invested in xAI's funding round in January 2026, and HUMAIN invested 3 billion dollars.
X's own audience in the Gulf is slightly smaller in its ad tools: DataReportal put X's ad reach at about 15 million in Saudi Arabia and 2.85 million in the UAE at the end of 2025, both down 6 to 7 percent on the year.
Other changes brands will notice
- X Money, X's payments service with a Visa debit card, launched in the US in July 2026 for Premium subscribers. It is not available in the Gulf.
- Communities, X's groups, were shut down in May 2026. X said they were used by fewer than 0.4 percent of users but produced 80 percent of spam reports, and pointed people to group chats instead.
- The standalone XChat app was removed from app stores in September 2026.
- X's terms now send disputes to courts in Texas.
What clients will ask, and what to answer
- Is X safe for my brand? X claims more than 99 percent brand safety, measured with IAS and DoubleVerify. Set adjacency controls and third-party verification, and record the choice with the client.
- Should we use Grok to make images? Not of real people, and never of anyone without their consent. Label AI content.
- Should we stay on X in Saudi Arabia? Its reach there is still large, around 43 percent of the population in X's own tools. The decision is about the audience, not the headlines.
- Should we worry about regulation? The investigations so far are in Europe and the UK. Keep watching for anything that changes where ads can run.
The ad mockup generator on this site shows an ad in X's timeline, useful for showing a client exactly what they are approving.
