Vine Meme Coin Spikes After Elon Musk Says the App Is Returning—With an AI Twist

X owner Elon Musk said early Thursday that the once-popular Vine is set to return "in AI form," with the video-sharing app’s co-founder, Rus Yusupov, then posting what appeared to be an AI-generated video.

As the news spread, the Solana meme coin Vine Coin—which was launched by Yusupov in January—skyrocketed in value.

Yusupov reposted one of his old X posts that stated, “Imagine a feed of short viral AI videos,” and a video of him lip-syncing to audio of Musk speaking about AI. The video appears to be somewhat AI-generated, with X’s native AI model Grok also thinking as such, possibly acting as an early demo of the upcoming AI-infused app.

Yusupov launched Vine Coin in January, hinting that the app would soon be relaunched by sending a Vine Coin waitlist link. The Pump.fun-created token quickly spiked to a near $500 million market cap before crashing 92 over the next month, per data from DEXScreener. 

Back when it was called Twitter, X acquired Vine in 2012 for a reported $30 million but then shut it down in 2017. Eight years later, in January 2025, Musk said he was “looking into” bringing the app back and said he told an employee of xAI—the artificial intelligence arm of Musk’s X—to take on the project in March.

Since then, Vine Coin has mostly traded sideways, settling at a $42.2 million market cap on Wednesday. But as Musk reignited interest in the app’s apparent relaunch, the token more than doubled in price and hit a peak market cap of $86.7 million.

All of this movement comes despite there being no official confirmation that the app’s relaunch will use Vine Coin or have anything to do with the meme coin.

In a February message sent in the official Vine Coin Telegram, Yusupov welcomed fans to the chat and said, “It‘s time to bring back Vine.” This message gave community members hope that the coin will somehow be linked to the relaunch.

Following Musk’s most recent post, one user speculated that Vine Coin will get “utility” within the app, and another said, “Imagine [Musk] posts the [contract address] of VINE to be used for creators and community payment.”

Vine Coin has shed some of its gains, currently priced above $0.057 with a nearly $58 million market cap. It‘s still down 87 from its all-time high, despite the daily spike.