Nikita Bier, head of product at X, announces departure after more than a year in role
Nikita Bier, head of product at X, announced his departure on Wednesday after just over a year in the role. He will transition to an advisory position. During his tenure, Bier led multiple product updates, but his growth figures differed from official reports.
Platform X (formerly Twitter) has seen another management change. Product lead Nikita Bier announced on Wednesday (local time) that he is officially stepping down after just over a year in the role. In a statement posted on X, Bier said he would leave his current position but continue to serve in an advisory capacity.
Bier previously built two successful social interaction apps before joining X. In his X post, he said: "Serving the X community has been the honor of a lifetime. X is and will remain the most important communications technology in history. But running this app is a 24/7 job, and now is the time for me to catch my breath."
Over the past year, Bier gradually became X's public-facing product spokesperson. His personal X account was often the only official channel for users to get updates on app development. Bier said that during his tenure, Platform X witnessed "unprecedented growth in new users and engagement," breaking records every month.
"Since this time last year, we have risen 70 places in the App Store rankings," Bier said. "Over the past 400 days, we have rebuilt nearly every aspect of X: the timeline, the Android app, onboarding, notifications, chat, and more. We also launched nearly 30 new products while maintaining the integrity of the 'town square': becoming the first app to show 'country of origin' on profiles and building defenses against AI bots."
However, Bier's growth claims have not always been corroborated by X's officially reported data. In February, a week after X owner Elon Musk claimed app usage hit an all-time high, X's transparency report under the EU's Digital Services Act showed that X usage in Europe actually declined by 15% in the second half of 2025.
In January, Bier shared a chart showing that X's average daily time spent was breaking records almost every day. But when asked about the data behind the chart, Bier said the numbers did not represent all users, but only reflected "authenticated iOS devices with phone numbers verified through major carriers."
Additionally, according to the SpaceX prospectus released in May, X's parent company reported that as of March 2026, the app had reached 550 million monthly active users, a significant increase from 520 million in December 2025. However, in May 2024, Musk stated that X had already reached 600 million monthly active users, a figure he and Bier have repeatedly cited in subsequent updates. Given the discrepancy between X's selectively disclosed data and the actual usage statistics it publishes in official auditable formats, X does not appear to have truly achieved the growth momentum that Bier and Musk have claimed.
Nevertheless, Bier did play a role in improving multiple aspects of the app, including optimizing the incentive structure for creator monetization and strengthening efforts to combat bots and spam.
So, the question arises: Why is Bier leaving? If X is experiencing such remarkable success and Bier is its public spokesperson, why would he choose to leave? Wouldn't Musk be willing to pay a higher salary to keep him? Perhaps X is on the brink of another major transformation, or perhaps bad news is coming, and Bier chose to step away before the storm arrives.