X taps Benji Taylor and gears up for what Nikita Bier calls its biggest Grok algorithm change yet

X hired Benji Taylor as its new design lead this week. Elon Musk and product lead Nikita Bier both welcomed him publicly on Wednesday with quick posts on the platform.

Taylor brings solid experience, as seen in his LinkedIn profile. He started Los Feliz Engineering, the team that built the Family crypto wallet. After that, he served as chief product officer at Aave and most recently led design at Base.

In his own announcement, Taylor said he is joining to head up design and work directly with Musk, Bier, and the rest of the crew. Musk’s post suggests his responsibilities will cover both X and xAI, which gives the hire more weight than a standard design role. He described the team as a design dream team and said he is already hiring. He highlighted the chance to work at a massive scale while focusing on craft, speed, usability, and real impact.

Crypto analyst Willy Woo also posted that Musk bringing in Benji hints X is growing into a full finance app that will include crypto. So that might be a space to watch out for in the coming weeks.

Bier went further in a separate post. He announced that the full power of Grok will hit the algorithm next week and called it the biggest change X has made yet. That is a bold statement. Feed updates on the platform tend to roll out quickly, and users notice them right away.

This isn’t a huge surprise if you’ve been following developments on the platform. Back in October, Musk did mention that Grok would take control of the algorithm and even let users control their feeds by just asking Grok. Then, earlier this year, the platform open-sourced its Grok-powered algorithm. So this is just another advancement in the same direction.

Look, it’s too early to say if these moves guarantee users will love every change, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that X and xAI are moving fast. The most recent change on X was the introduction of more filters for post replies. We covered all the details here. As for Grok, Elon Musk highlighted a new SuperGrok Lite subscription that offers users access to Grok Imagine and extended chat for less.

The company is still cooking up several other features that are expected to ship in the coming weeks. So we’ll have to wait and see how Benji Taylor spices things up with his design flair.

Featured image edited with AI

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