X, Grok and SpaceX: what the AI shift means for your brand

Not long ago X was simply a social network owned by Elon Musk. It is now a subsidiary of an AI company, which itself sits 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. Monique Pintarelli leads its advertising, and Nikita Bier, its head of product, stepped down in August 2026, staying on as an adviser.

Grok now runs much of 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, and the regulators

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 responded. Ofcom opened an investigation in the UK 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. No action by a Gulf government had been found at the time of writing. In September 2026 a Canadian child protection group and The New York Times reported that X and Grok still surfaced child sexual abuse material.

In a separate case, 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's links to 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 ad reach in the region shrank a little over 2025. DataReportal put it at about 15 million in Saudi Arabia and 2.85 million in the UAE at the end of the year, both down 6 to 7 percent.

Other changes you may 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 fewer than 0.4 percent of users used them but they 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.

Four questions to settle before you spend

• Is X safe for our brand? X claims more than 99 percent brand safety, measured with IAS and DoubleVerify. Set adjacency controls and third-party verification, and keep a record of what you agreed with your agency.
• 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 rests on your audience, not the headlines.
• Should regulation worry us? So far the investigations are in Europe and the UK. Keep watching for anything that changes where ads can run.

Whatever you decide, look at exactly how an ad will appear in X's timeline before you approve it. If you would like a calm, practical view on where X fits in your Gulf media plan, speak to ALXO.