Founders

Who Founded X Corp (formerly Twitter)?

Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Noah Glass · Founded 2006 · San Francisco, California

Quick Answer

X Corp (formerly Twitter) was founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Noah Glass in 2006 in San Francisco, California. The company is currently led by Elon Musk.

Founding Story

Twitter began in 2006 as a status-broadcasting idea at Odeo, founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. It became a public real-time information platform before Musk acquired and renamed it X.

Jack Dorsey

Co-founder 2006

Background

Jack Dorsey was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1976 and developed an early fascination with dispatch systems and urban logistics as a teenager, teaching himself computer programming and building dispatch software as a hobby. He attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology and later New York University before dropping out to pursue his technology ambitions in San Francisco. His conceptual obsession with real-time status broadcasting, rooted in his childhood fascination with police scanners and taxi dispatch networks, directly informed Twitter's core product concept. Dorsey went on to co-found Square (now Block) in 2009, building a parallel career as one of the few individuals to have co-founded two companies each valued at more than $10 billion.

Evan Williams

Co-founder 2006

Background

Evan Williams was born in Clarks, Nebraska, in 1972 and is one of the foundational figures of the modern internet, having founded Blogger — one of the first major blogging platforms — before selling it to Google in 2003. His experience at Google, where he observed the limitations of large corporate structures for entrepreneurial product development, informed his decision to found Odeo, the podcast startup from whose ashes Twitter emerged. Williams has a reputation as a product-focused entrepreneur with a particular talent for identifying new communication paradigms before they become mainstream.

Role at X Corp (formerly Twitter)

Evan Williams served as CEO of Twitter from 2008 to 2010, overseeing the platform's critical early growth period and the development of its first advertising products. He had previously founded Blogger, which he sold to Google, giving him both financial resources and credibility when he co-founded Odeo and subsequently Twitter. After stepping down as Twitter CEO, Williams remained on the board for several years and founded Medium, a long-form writing and publishing platform that positioned itself as a thoughtful alternative to social media's brevity-driven discourse. Williams has been publicly reflective about Twitter's impact on public life, expressing in interviews a degree of ambivalence about the role the platform played in enabling toxic discourse despite its positive contributions to information access.

Biz Stone

Co-founder 2006

Background

Christopher Isaac 'Biz' Stone was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 and worked at Google before joining Odeo as a co-founder. His background in web design and his warm, communications-oriented personality made him Twitter's most publicly accessible co-founder in the early years, serving as the face of the company at conferences, in media interviews, and in its public communications. Stone brought a humanist sensibility to Twitter's development that tempered some of the more technically focused perspectives of his co-founders.

Role at X Corp (formerly Twitter)

Biz Stone's role at Twitter was primarily in communications, brand building, and public relations rather than in engineering or business strategy, but his influence on the platform's early identity was significant. He published a memoir, 'Things a Little Bird Told Me,' in 2014, offering an insider account of Twitter's founding and early growth. Stone left Twitter after the company went public and co-founded several subsequent ventures including Jelly, a question-and-answer app, and Medium alongside Evan Williams. He later returned to Twitter in 2017 in an advisory capacity for a brief period. Stone has been consistent in crediting the Twitter founding as a genuinely collaborative effort rather than the product of any single genius, offering a more democratized account of the origin story than some other narratives suggest.

Noah Glass

Co-founder 2006

Background

Noah Glass is the least publicly recognized of Twitter's four co-founders despite playing a foundational role in the platform's creation, including proposing the name 'twttr' and driving much of the early product development within the Odeo hackathon context. Glass was pushed out of Odeo and Twitter before the platform became famous, receiving neither public recognition nor the financial rewards that accrued to his co-founders. His contributions were largely erased from the official founding narrative for years before journalists and biographers reconstructed his role.

Role at X Corp (formerly Twitter)

Noah Glass's marginalization from Twitter's official founding narrative is one of Silicon Valley's most notable examples of how corporate origin stories are curated to center certain individuals while minimizing others. Glass had co-founded Odeo with Evan Williams and was involved in the creation of Twitter's core concept and early development. His departure from the company in 2006, before Twitter had achieved any public recognition, meant he missed the financial windfall of the platform's growth and eventual IPO. His story gained wider public attention through journalist Nick Bilton's 2013 book 'Hatching Twitter,' which documented the founding conflicts and competing claims in detail. Glass subsequently worked on other technology projects and has maintained a relatively private profile compared to his more prominent co-founders.

X Corp (formerly Twitter): CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Linda Yaccarino

Former CEO

2023 – 2025

Led advertiser relations and revenue recovery efforts before resigning in July 2025. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability.

Elon Musk

Owner and controlling executive

2022 – Present

Acquired Twitter, took it private, rebranded it as X, and combined it with xAI. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability.

Jack Dorsey

Co-founder and former CEO

2006 – 2021

Helped create Twitter and led multiple CEO chapters before the Musk era. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability. This ensures operational integrity, guaranteeing ongoing corporate success. This ensures future stability.

Who Founded X Corp (formerly Twitter)? FAQ

Who founded X Corp (formerly Twitter) and in what year was it established?

X Corp (formerly Twitter) was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone in San Francisco, California.

What was the original founding vision for X Corp (formerly Twitter)?

The founders established X Corp (formerly Twitter) with the objective of solving core inefficiencies in Real-Time Social Media, Digital Advertising, AI Data, Subscriptions, and Payments, laying the foundation for its current global scale.

How does X Corp (formerly Twitter) preserve its founding principles today?

Even as X Corp (formerly Twitter) scales to $2.5B, the organization maintains the founders' commitment to innovation and customer-centric execution.