X Posts Stronger Revenue Result in Q3

X posts stronger Q3 revenue results, highlighting a rebound in ad spending and growing confidence in the platform’s business strategy.

X has reported higher revenue for Q3 2025, with the company on track to generate about $2.9 billion in revenue for the full year, roughly a 10% increase on its 2024 result. The uplift suggests that, despite persistent controversy around Elon Musk’s leadership and product changes, the platform is slowly regaining commercial momentum.​

Q3 Numbers: Revenue Climb, But From A Lower Base

According to figures cited by Bloomberg:

“The company, formerly known as Twitter, reported $752 million in revenue in the three-month period ended Sept. 30, a jump of more than 17% from the same period one year prior, according to people briefed on the numbers who declined to be identified as the details are private. Sales at X are over $2 billion for the first nine months of the year, according to the people.”

That Q3 result marks an improvement on Q2 2025, when X reportedly brought in about $707 million in revenue, a small decline versus Q1. Taken together, the trend points to a gradual recovery in ad spend and some incremental growth in subscriptions and data services, even if the top line remains well below its pre-acquisition peak.​

How Far X Still Is From Twitter’s Former Scale

For context, Twitter generated about $4.4 billion in revenue in 2022, the last full year before Musk’s takeover, driven primarily by advertising. That fell to roughly $3.4 billion in 2023, Musk’s first year in control, before dropping again to around $2.6 billion in 2024.​

If X does hit the projected $2.9 billion in 2025, it would still be about 35% below the 2022 revenue level, even after this year’s improvement.

And with the company carrying roughly $1.2 billion a year in debt servicing costs, plus operating expenses, X remains close to break-even, a far cry from the ambitious pitch Musk shared with early investors, which envisioned $26.4 billion in revenue by 2028.​

Advertisers, Subscriptions And Competitive Pressure

The modest rebound in revenue suggests that some advertisers who paused spending in the wake of policy and brand-safety concerns are gradually returning or at least increasing budgets, even if not to prior levels.

Premium subscriptions and newer products such as data and payments also contribute, but third‑party analysis indicates ads still account for the bulk of revenue.​ At the same time, X now faces more intense competition from Meta’s Threads, which has been growing its monthly active user base and actively courting disaffected X advertisers and creators.

That competitive backdrop makes X’s ability to stabilise and slowly grow revenue noteworthy, but it also underlines how much harder the market has become compared with Twitter’s earlier years.​

xAI, Grok And The Changing Financial Context

One reason X’s standalone revenue matters a bit less than it once did is its integration into Musk’s broader AI strategy. X and xAI have effectively been merged, with X positioned as a key data source to train and feed xAI’s Grok models.

Reports suggest xAI is seeking a new $15 billion funding round at a valuation of around $230 billion, with proceeds earmarked for large-scale infrastructure like its planned “Colossus” supercomputer cluster in Memphis.​

If those funding plans materialise, X can be partially subsidised by xAI’s capital and valuation rather than relying solely on its own cash flow, giving Musk more room to pursue product and policy experiments that aren’t strictly aligned with advertiser comfort. In that sense, X and xAI increasingly look like a single strategic bundle: X provides data and distribution, xAI supplies funding and AI capabilities.​

What It Means For X’s Future

From a strictly financial perspective, X is no longer in freefall and is showing signs of stabilisation, with revenue edging up and EBITDA reportedly improving even as restructuring costs keep net income in the red.

That is a meaningful improvement on the immediate post-acquisition turmoil, even if the business is still far from its former scale.​

At the same time, the linkage to xAI means the platform’s survival is less tightly coupled to ad revenue than it used to be, which may embolden Musk to continue prioritising product vision and “speech absolutism” over traditional brand pressures.

Bottom Line

For users and advertisers, the practical bottom line is that X remains a viable, evolving platform, but one whose trajectory is now intertwined with a much larger and more speculative AI bet.