Elon Musk’s X is ramping up efforts to win advertisers back, and it’s doing it with a major rebuild: a new AI-powered advertising platform that began a phased rollout on Thursday.
Advertising has been a challenging area for X since Musk took over, with the company leaning more heavily on other revenue streams such as subscriptions and AI-related products. But recent projections suggest the ad business is beginning to regain momentum. Industry forecasts estimate X could bring in about $2.26 billion in ad revenue in 2025, climbing to roughly $2.46 billion in 2026. While that still puts it far below Twitter’s advertising peak in 2021, the trend line is moving upward again—something X clearly wants to accelerate.
The company’s answer is a rebuilt ads platform designed to feel more modern and perform better for marketers. X says the upgrade includes improved retrieval and ranking systems powered by artificial intelligence, aiming to deliver more relevant ad placements and stronger campaign performance. The goal is to give advertisers more control while also making it easier to build targeted campaigns with greater precision.
X also positions this overhaul as more than a one-time upgrade. The platform is being developed to support faster, smoother integration of new features over time, with ongoing improvements expected to roll out regularly rather than through infrequent major updates. Monique Pintarelli, head of global advertising at xAI, described the rebuild as an ambitious effort to create a substantially better advertising experience and to keep new capabilities arriving consistently as the system evolves.
The timing makes sense given X’s closer alignment with xAI after their merger last year. Across the broader tech industry, artificial intelligence is increasingly tied to advertising growth because it can automate and optimize key parts of marketing—helping with everything from campaign creation and audience targeting to measurement and performance analysis. This wave of AI-driven tools has also made sophisticated advertising capabilities more accessible to smaller businesses, not just large brands with big budgets.
For X, the message is clear: the company wants to be seen as a serious, modern advertising platform again—one that uses AI to help brands reach the right audiences, improve results, and keep campaigns adaptable as new features arrive.
