I think the signal on X has been deteriorating for years. Many valuable communities that existed purely on Twitter have scattered across the internet after Elon's transformation, often to many disconnected small communities across X, Mastodon instances, BlueSky, and reddit.
The labs might not be open. But they would want access to data. More open platforms (the web at large, but bluesky in particular has made open access an explicit goal) tend to provide that, relative to x/threads/facebook/reddit/youtube.
Some labs will be able to buy access. Not every platform will offer it. There are many more labs than the big ones.
Grok searching across x/twitter is too valuable to ignore or silo.
X is effectively a high signal comment layer for the entire internet + quasi internet (arxiv) + real world.
Same applies to any data silo I suppose, X just seems more straightforward to beachhead.