Nikita Bier has been appointed as the head of product at X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.

The announcement was made on June 30, 2025, and Musk welcomed Bier publicly.

Bier previously founded and sold two startups, including TBH, a polling app acquired by Facebook in 2017, and Gas, a social networking app sold to Discord in 2023.

He has been an active user of X, formerly Twitter, and had expressed interest in a product leadership role after Musk’s acquisition of the platform in 2022.

Bier joins X during its ongoing integration with Musk’s AI venture, xAI. The two companies have collaborated on projects, including Grok, an AI chatbot developed by xAI and distributed through X.

It is unclear how much of Bier’s role will involve initiatives from xAI.

X representatives have not provided further details regarding Bier’s responsibilities beyond Musk’s public statement.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Serial social app entrepreneur brings repeatable viral growth formula to X

Nikita Bier has a consistent pattern of creating viral social applications without traditional marketing budgets, making him uniquely qualified to address X’s user retention challenges.

He’s successfully built and sold two similar social apps, TBH to Facebook for approximately $30 million and Gas to Discord, both reaching millions of users within months of launch12.

His product approach emphasizes understanding core human motivations, optimizing for the first three seconds of user experience, and targeting younger demographics with high engagement potential3.

Bier’s proven strategy involves starting with narrow audiences (often high schools) to build momentum before expansion, creating a sense of exclusivity that fuels organic growth4.

His expertise in creating network effects and solving the “cold start” problem for social platforms could be particularly valuable as X competes with Meta’s Threads and other emerging social platforms5.

2️⃣ X-xAI merger creates unique product development opportunities