Twitter owner Elon Musk has found someone to replace him as the company’s CEO, but he hasn’t revealed who it is.
Musk tweeted on Thursday that the new CEO will step into the role at some point over the next six weeks.
“Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk said in his tweet. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” But Musk made clear he’ll remain active at the company, adding that his role “will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
Straight after acquiring Twitter in October in a deal worth $44 billion, Musk fired the then-CEO Parag Agrawal and took on the role himself, briefly changing his Twitter bio description to “Chief Twit.”
Two months later he ran a Twitter poll asking if he should step down as CEO, promising to abide by the result. Of the more than 17 million people who voted, just over 57% said yes, he should go. Musk responded to the result in typical fashion, tweeting: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”
Musk has faced criticism from some investors at Tesla — a company that along with SpaceX he also leads — who voiced concern that Twitter had become a time-consuming distraction for the billionaire entrepreneur, taking him away from Tesla and causing the brand to suffer.
In a sign of the issue’s continuing sensitivity, Tesla’s stock price shot up on Thursday in response to Musk’s news that he’d found a new CEO for the social media company.
Following Musk’s chaotic and controversial time as Twitter CEO, many will be watching to see how things change at the company when the new boss arrives in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal reports that Linda Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, is in talks to become Twitter’s CEO, according to the publication’s sources.
