Best AI Accounts to Follow on X (Twitter) in 2026
Zarif
AI Twitter—now AI X—can alert you to a release or paper quickly. It can also turn an unverified screenshot into a consensus before anyone opens the underlying artifact.
Updated September 25, 2026 — every handle rechecked on X.
Last verified September 25, 2026. Recheck target: monthly. Download CSV (28 entries).
AI Twitter or AI X is the network of researchers, engineers, founders, educators, policymakers, and official organizations discussing artificial intelligence on X. A useful account links to papers, code, documentation, evaluations, or firsthand experiments instead of merely repeating news.
The goal is not to follow the most accounts. Build a balanced feed from people and organizations that link primary artifacts, document experiments, show expertise, correct mistakes, and cover different parts of the AI ecosystem. Linking primary artifacts matters most; the rest just help you judge what they link.
Start with five
These five earn a follow before you add a lab account or a commentator.
- Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) · A few times a month
Longer explanations, talks, and experiments that build LLM intuition instead of repeating launch copy.
- Simon Willison (@simonw) · Daily when something new ships
Documented prompts, outputs, and linked notes when a new model or API ships.
- Ethan Mollick (@emollick) · Several times a week
Research-informed guidance on AI at work and in education, with links to the longer writing.
- Sebastian Raschka (@rasbt) · Several times a week
Diagrams, code, and paper discussion that show what actually changed in a model.
- Chip Huyen (@chipro) · A few times a month
Evaluation, data, latency, cost, and the gap between a demo and a system you can run.
The directory
The matrix is the complete shortlist. Use the roles deliberately: research for papers, engineering for code and operating tradeoffs, primary sources for launch links, policy and public interest for the launch cycle's blind spots.
Scroll horizontally to compare the columns.
| Name | Role | Why it is here | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andrej Karpathy @karpathy | Research explainer | Longer explanations, talks, and experiments that build LLM intuition instead of repeating launch copy. Profile live under @karpathy as Andrej Karpathy. Latest non-pinned post Aug 2 describes an LLM experiment with a 1M-token budget; earlier posts cover LLM working habits and model-release commentary. About two to four posts a month since April. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a month Last active August 2, 2026 |
| Simon Willison @simonw | Hands-on testing | Documented prompts, outputs, and linked notes when a new model or API ships. Profile live under @simonw as Simon Willison. Near-daily posts through Sep 25 with linked notes on new model releases, TTS pricing, coding agents, and Datasette experiments. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Daily when something new ships Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Ethan Mollick @emollick | Applied use | Research-informed guidance on AI at work and in education, with links to the longer writing. Profile live under @emollick as Ethan Mollick. Many posts a day through Sep 25 on AI at work, model outputs, and agent security. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Sebastian Raschka @rasbt | Technical explanation | Diagrams, code, and paper discussion that show what actually changed in a model. Profile live under @rasbt as Sebastian Raschka. Posts through Sep 23 cover model architecture breakdowns, inference scaling from scratch, optimizer research, and open agent harnesses, with diagrams and video links. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 23, 2026 |
| Chip Huyen @chipro | Engineering systems | Evaluation, data, latency, cost, and the gap between a demo and a system you can run. Profile live under @chipro as Chip Huyen. Latest non-pinned post Sep 15; about eight posts since June, mostly short questions about agent skills, model tiering and token pricing. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a month Last active September 15, 2026 |
| Demis Hassabis @demishassabis | Research | Primary research announcements from Google DeepMind, especially AI-for-science. Profile live under @demishassabis as Demis Hassabis; bio now reads Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet (role change announced Aug 5). Recent posts cover AlphaGenome Atlas, Gemini 3.8 Flash, and Gemini Robotics 2. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When DeepMind ships Last active September 16, 2026 |
| Fei-Fei Li @drfeifei | Research | Vision, spatial intelligence, and human-centered AI from someone who still publishes. Profile live under @drfeifei as Fei-Fei Li. Posts through Sep 22 cover World Labs' Atlas world model, spatial intelligence, robotics research hiring, and human-centered AI remarks. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When there is research or institutional news Last active September 22, 2026 |
| François Chollet @fchollet | Commentary | Software and AI takes from the creator of Keras and ARC-AGI. Less about ARC and evaluation than it used to be. Profile live under @fchollet as François Chollet. Posts daily through Sep 25, mostly takes on software engineering and AI; no ARC or evaluation posts appear among the last ~14. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Daily Last active September 25, 2026 |
| David Ha @hardmaru | Research | Generative and world-model papers with visual experiments attached. Profile live under @hardmaru; display name is 'hardmaru' and bio says Co-Founder and CEO of Sakana AI (David Ha). Recent posts mix Sakana AI company news, world-model and virtual fruit fly research links, and commentary on Japan's tech industry. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 24, 2026 |
| Jim Fan @DrJimFan | Research | Robotics and embodied-AI research explainers that link the paper or demo. Profile live under @DrJimFan as Jim Fan (NVIDIA Director of Robotics). Latest non-pinned post Sep 4; earlier posts link NVIDIA GEAR lab robotics papers (tactile manipulation, long-context robot models, ASPIRE skills library). About two to four posts a month. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a month Last active September 4, 2026 |
| Nathan Lambert @natolambert | Research | Open models and post-training commentary from someone who trains the models. Profile live under @natolambert as Nathan Lambert; bio now says 'Open model research @ something new. Prev. co-led Olmo at Ai2'. Multiple posts Sep 21-25 on open-weight models, RSI, AI regulation, and a new Interconnects podcast. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Daily-ish Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg | Applied AI | Accessible industry and education perspective without pretending every launch is a phase change. Profile live under @AndrewYNg as Andrew Ng. Posts through Sep 21 cover an AI Engineering skills map, the OpenWorker open-source agent, new courses, and arguments for AI openness. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a week Last active September 21, 2026 |
| swyx @swyx | Engineering | AI-engineering tools, events, and implementation patterns from the Latent Space orbit. Profile live under @swyx. Posts through Sep 25 cover Latent Space podcast episodes, AINews, model comparisons, and conference notes; pinned post dates from 2020. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Daily Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Hamel Husain @HamelHusain | Engineering | Evaluation and LLM-engineering methods with the failure modes included. Profile live under @HamelHusain as Hamel Husain. Daily posts through Sep 25 are evals Q&A, links to his evals resources and guest posts, and discussion of classifier-style models. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Shreya Shankar @sh_reya | Engineering | Data systems and evaluation thinking for applications that have to stay correct. Profile live under @sh_reya as Shreya Shankar (incoming CMU assistant professor). Posts through Sep 25 cover Quail, an open-source AI-SQL engine, LLM operators in databases, and evaluation and formal verification. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a week Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Harrison Chase @hwchase17 | Engineering | Primary updates from the agent-framework ecosystem, to be checked against changelogs. Profile live under @hwchase17 as Harrison Chase. Daily posts through Sep 25 on LangSmith and LangGraph features, decision models used as judges, and background agents. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 25, 2026 |
| OpenAI @OpenAI | Primary source | Official announcement links for OpenAI releases; still an organization's perspective. Official @OpenAI account live. Posts through Sep 25 announce GPT-6 Sol and Luna, ChatGPT Voice updates, a mental-health benchmark, and a disclosure about agents sending data to third parties. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Anthropic @AnthropicAI | Primary source | Official announcement links for Claude, research, and policy posts. Official @AnthropicAI account live. Posts through Sep 25 announce Claude Opus 5.5, science-blog results, a threat intelligence report, alignment incident assessments, and a life-sciences verification program. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind | Primary source | Research and product links from Google DeepMind's own account. Official @GoogleDeepMind account live. Latest non-pinned post Sep 17 (pinned Sep 23 post announces Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS); recent posts cover AlphaGenome Atlas, Gemini 3.8 Live, and WeatherNext 3. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 17, 2026 |
| AI at Meta @AIatMeta | Primary source | Official Meta AI announcements, currently mostly the Muse agent and Muse Spark models. Not @MetaAI. Official @AIatMeta account live. Posts through Sep 24 are almost all about Muse, Meta's personal agent, and the Muse Spark model family via Meta's API, plus an internal agent benchmark; no open-weights model releases appear in the last ~13 posts. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 24, 2026 |
| Mistral AI @MistralAI | Primary source | Official model and product links from Mistral. Official @MistralAI account live. Posts through Sep 18 cover a security-claim statement, a Mozilla partnership, a EUR 3B Series D, and the Shieldstral open-weights safety model (Aug 4). Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 18, 2026 |
| Hugging Face @huggingface | Primary source | Repository, model, and community links for the open-model ecosystem. Official @huggingface account live. Latest post Sep 10 (Training Agents 4); earlier posts cover open-model reports and Hub milestones. Now about weekly rather than daily. Source checked September 25, 2026. | About weekly Last active September 10, 2026 |
| NVIDIA AI @NVIDIAAI | Primary source | Developer and research links for inference, systems, and platforms. Official @NVIDIAAI account live. Posts through Sep 24 cover Nemotron models (Diarization, 3.5 Lightning), Dynamo AIPerf load testing, research papers, and GTC events. Source checked September 25, 2026. | Several times a week Last active September 24, 2026 |
| Cohere @cohere | Primary source | Official product and research links for enterprise LLM work. Official account live; handle now displays as @cohere (same account, case only). Posts through Sep 25 mix product news (Model Vault in Canada, Confidential Computing, North 2) with event and sponsorship marketing. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 25, 2026 |
| Perplexity @perplexity_ai | Primary source | Official product links; treat as marketing until you open the underlying change. Official @perplexity_ai account live. Posts through Sep 24 announce Fast Search in the Search API, Portable Computer on Windows, model additions, and research on self-distillation and its CobbleDB database. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they ship Last active September 24, 2026 |
| Stanford HAI @StanfordHAI | Policy | Institutional research and policy links that sit outside the launch cycle. Official @StanfordHAI account live. Posts through Sep 24 promote a new faculty series on AI policy, research summaries, a public sentiment survey, and school AI-policy data. Source checked September 25, 2026. | A few times a week Last active September 24, 2026 |
| NIST @NIST | Policy | Official NIST announcements. AI guidance appears here when NIST publishes it, but most posts cover other measurement science. Official @NIST account live. Posts through Sep 25 cover forensics, wind engineering, quantum sensors, awards, and a token-protection guideline with CISA; none of the last ~14 posts are about AI measurement or AI risk. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When NIST publishes Last active September 25, 2026 |
| AI Now Institute @AINowInstitute | Public interest | Accountability and labor analysis that counterbalances launch-week consensus. Official @AINowInstitute account live. Posts through Sep 25 cover AI accountability, industry lobbying, labor and antitrust testimony, and a People's AI Assembly event on Oct 19. Source checked September 25, 2026. | When they publish Last active September 25, 2026 |
How this list is maintained
Accounts stay when they have a clear job in a reader's feed. Follower counts are ignored. Recheck activity, handle changes, and original-source links each month.
A practical starting setup is four private X Lists, not one algorithmic home feed: primary sources, research, engineering, and work or policy. Start small—about five to eight accounts per list. X is a discovery layer: open the original paper, code, documentation, evaluation, or long-form post before acting on a claim.
Keep an account when at least two of these are true: it regularly links primary sources; it adds expertise you cannot get from a lab announcement; it shows methods, prompts, code, or limitations; it separates fact, interpretation, and prediction; it corrects earlier claims. Mute accounts whose feed is mostly outrage, affiliate promotion, or screenshots without context.
For a source layer beyond social posts, use AI blogs and news sites alongside this feed. Discussion that needs to stay findable belongs in AI communities, not in a 24-hour reply thread.
Want a weekly source-controlled reading list in addition to your X feed? Build a weekly AI article recommendation workflow that collects, deduplicates, and ranks the sources you choose.
See the change log below for updates to this directory.
Change log
Rechecked every account's posts tab: each entry now shows when it last posted and what it posts about now. Removed the Ada Lovelace Institute and OECD Innovation, which both say they no longer post on X. Updated posting frequency for four accounts and the description of three whose focus has shifted.
Moved onto the directory template: last-verified date, start-with-five, per-entry reason and cadence, and a CSV download. Handles rechecked.
Links and affiliations verified; Meta AI handle updated to @AIatMeta.
Follow changes to every directory with the directory changes RSS feed.
