When Andreessen Horowitz backed MTS on Monday, it was not underwriting a finished media company. It was underwriting a format: a live, X-native news desk built for people who already live on the timeline.
MTS, short for Monitoring the Situation, says it will cover technology, business, politics, and culture as events unfold on X. In the firm's announcement, a16z framed the project as a bet that AI will make content abundant enough that trusted curation, pacing, and structure become more valuable. The founding group includes Chris Bakke, Theo Jaffee, Gabriel Dickinson, and Sophie of the netcapgirl account, with a host bench that a16z says spans media, startups, markets, and tech.
The important point is that MTS did launch with something observable. Its introductory video, welcome broadcast, and a steady run of day-one posts showed a real format: host desk shots, guest windows, promo cards, and rapid clips cut from the live feed. The public slate on April 20 included Balaji Srinivasan, Marc Andreessen, Packy McCormick, Jayden Clark, notthreadguy, and Shaun Maguire.
That makes MTS closer to a control room than to a newsletter. On its first day it mixed live conversation with fast-turn quote clips like Andreessen on "Randomonium" and Balaji on the internet as the upstream force behind AI, finance, and distribution, then switched into hard-news mode with a Tim Cook alert post. The visual language borrows from cable news and market TV. The distribution is pure timeline.
This is why the more interesting comparison is not to a Substack but to TBPN. OpenAI's acquisition of TBPN earlier this month showed that tech companies increasingly view media channels as strategic infrastructure, not just marketing. MTS pushes the same thesis from the other direction: instead of buying an existing audience, build a new network natively around the feed, the clip, and the live desk.
There are still obvious unknowns. a16z did not disclose the size of its check. mts.now is still a minimal landing page. The company has not published audience or revenue figures beyond what is visible on X. Those are real gaps. They are also normal launch-day gaps for a media product whose actual surface area is its programming cadence, not a feature-rich app.
That distinction matters because the product here is habit. If MTS works, it will not be because the website looked complete on day one. It will be because the team can make the timeline feel legible and worth checking repeatedly through live hosts, recognizable guests, and rapid editorial packaging. That is the format bet a16z just financed.
Calling MTS unfinished is fair. Calling it empty misses the point. What exists today is an early broadcast format with a clear house style and a distribution strategy that fits how tech conversations already move. The next question is whether that format becomes a habit before someone else builds the same network faster.
