Head of X, aka Twitter, is leaving one year after Elon Musk gave him the job

Elon Musk's head of X, Nikita Bier, is leaving just over a year after he took the role. Nikita was the face behind some of X's biggest changes including showing the origin countries for accounts, and the crackdown on engagement bait.

In Short

• Nikita Bier steps down as X product head after one year
• He will remain an adviser, calling service to X a lifetime privilege
• Nikita was appointed by Elon Musk

X, aka Twitter, may not be the same again. Nikita Bier, who was made the product head for X by Elon Musk last year, has announced that he is stepping down. In a post on X, Nikita wrote, “It’s time to pass the torch and demote myself to my natural state: a poster.”

Nikita Bier shared the update just over a month after marking his first year at the job, which he joined in June last year. His exit comes just weeks after Musk’s combined SpaceX, X and xAI companies went public.

In the same post, Nikita said serving the X community had been “the privilege of a lifetime” and added that “running this app is a 24/7 job and it’s now time for me to take a breather.” Though he will continue as an advisor for X.

Elon Musk replied to Nikita Bier’s farewell post. “Thanks for helping make this platform much better! You will be missed,” the tech trillionaire wrote.

Nikita Bier made big changes to X

During his time as the product head, Nikita made a bunch of sweeping changes to X. This included the addition of the “about this account” page that shows the origin country for an account. This feature exposed various popular accounts that were posing as US-based political influencers but weren’t actually from the US.

The X product head also cracked down on engagement bait and on creators who reposted other people’s content. The platform also launched X Chat, a new encrypted system for messaging on the platform.

At the same time, X also found itself under scrutiny due to the AI chatbot Grok, which at one point, was undressing users into bikinis without their consent.

Coming back to Nikita Bier’s post, he said that X had seen “unprecedented growth” in new users and engagement. The app was breaking records every month and had climbed 70 spots in the App Store compared with the same time last year.

Nikita added that while he and his team had worked on bringing about 30 new products in the past year, there was still a long way to go for X. “There's certainly much more work to be done, but our foundation is stronger than ever,” he added.

Who is Nikita Bier?

Nikita Bier is a former startup founder and Lightspeed venture partner. The venture capital firm had called him the “king of virality” for his ability to create products that could go viral.

Before X, he founded tbh, which was acquired by Facebook in 2017, and Gas, which was acquired by Discord in 2023, both apps were later shut down. Bier was appointed as product head last year days before former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino stepped down.

Nikita Bier says that the “next leaders” would include Benji Taylor on design, Mridul Singhai on core product engineering and Dinkin Flickaa on mobile engineering. Though it is unclear who will take up his role of product head for the platform.

- Ends