Threads vs. X: Why Meta’s 500 Million-User Milestone Wasn’t the Main Reason for JPMorgan’s Upgrade

Meta had a favorable week of product and market narratives: Threads reached 500 million monthly active users, Mark Zuckerberg said it was either bigger than X or close to it, and Meta launched its Muse personal AI agent. The important distinction is that the Threads claim supported investor sentiment, while JPMorgan’s upgrade was explicitly an AI-growth call. 134821

What the Threads claim signaled to investors

Meta announced in June that Threads had reached 500 million monthly active users, nearly three years after its launch as an X competitor. The company paired the milestone with new community features and Your Algo, a feed-control setting. 13

In September, Zuckerberg said Threads was “either bigger than X” or close to reaching that scale. Reports linked the remark, alongside the Muse launch, to a roughly 5% premarket rise in Meta shares. 486

For investors, the message was larger than a single user count: Meta appeared able to use its existing social-network ecosystem to build another massive consumer product. That distribution advantage is strategically valuable even before Threads becomes a major direct revenue contributor.

Why the comparison with X is not settled

The assertion that Threads has surpassed X should be read as a competitive assessment, not a definitive measurement result.

• Threads’ reported figure is monthly active users. Meta confirmed the 500 million monthly-user milestone, but monthly activity does not reveal how often people use the service or how central it is to their daily social activity. 13
• Daily-mobile comparisons are narrower. Similarweb data previously showed Threads edging X in worldwide daily active users on mobile devices, but that metric does not include all web use and does not establish total monthly audience size. 52
• Instagram is a major distribution advantage. Threads was built using Instagram’s social graph, helping it acquire users rapidly. That advantage is real, but it also means critics can reasonably question how much activity reflects Threads’ stand-alone appeal versus Meta’s cross-promotion and account integration. 5553
• X’s public audience data are limited and not directly comparable. Without a shared methodology or independently audited disclosures from both companies, there is no clean apples-to-apples total-user comparison.

Threads is nevertheless at a meaningful milestone: 500 million monthly users is halfway to Zuckerberg’s long-standing ambition of one billion users. 4756

Why Zuckerberg still uses X

Zuckerberg’s continued posting on X is consistent with the limits of a pure user-count comparison. He has said Meta uses Threads and X to reach different audiences, with X remaining useful for technology and AI communities. 487

That matters for Meta’s broader product strategy. A platform can be smaller, or serve a narrower demographic, yet still be influential for a company trying to reach developers, AI enthusiasts and real-time technology conversations. Meta’s willingness to promote its AI efforts across platforms reflects that audience segmentation.

JPMorgan’s actual investment case: AI beyond advertising

JPMorgan upgraded Meta from Neutral to Overweight and raised its price target to $820 from $640. Its stated rationale was Meta’s potential to create growth beyond advertising through frontier AI models and AI-driven products, including Muse and model API access. 2122

In other words, Threads helped reinforce a broader thesis that Meta has unusually powerful consumer distribution. But the bank’s upgrade focused on whether Meta could turn that distribution into new AI revenue lines—not on Threads’ size alone.

Muse made the AI story tangible

Meta introduced Muse in the U.S. as a personal AI agent available through a dedicated app and WhatsApp. Meta says the agent can help carry out tasks across connected apps and services rather than only answer questions; it runs in a dedicated virtual-machine environment with its own browser. 3132

That product framing gives investors a more concrete route to consumer AI adoption, potential subscriptions and related platform opportunities. It also puts Meta more visibly into the personal-agent contest alongside companies building advanced consumer AI products.

The risks are equally material. Reuters reported that internal testing found cases in which Muse stalled and potentially exposed sensitive information without authorization. An agent that can access email, calendars, payments, health services and smart-home tools has a much higher bar for reliability and privacy than a conventional chatbot. 31

The bottom line

Threads’ 500 million-user mark gave Meta a powerful proof point: it can launch and scale a major new social product from its existing network. Zuckerberg’s claim that Threads is near or above X helped strengthen that narrative and contributed to positive market sentiment. 1348

But it was not the stated reason JPMorgan turned bullish. The upgrade was fundamentally a bet that Meta’s AI agents, frontier models and developer access can produce new businesses beyond advertising. Whether that bet succeeds will depend less on a disputed Threads-versus-X ranking than on Muse’s adoption, safety and ability to deliver useful work for consumers. 2131