Skip to main content

Elon Musk to take Twitter CEO role for the first few months

Surprising no one, Elon Musk is reportedly the next Twitter CEO, at least on a temporary basis, that is.

On Thursday, it was reported that sources told CNBC’s David Faber that Musk is expected to take over as Twitter CEO “for a few months” after the acquisition concludes.

The current CEO of Twitter is Parag Agrawal and he’s only been in the position since late November of 2021.  Agrawal hadn’t even been CEO for six months before Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid in April. With Musk buying the company and now expected to take over as CEO, it’s becoming more likely that Twitter will take a different direction.

It is also likely, that given Musk’s views on free speech, we’ll see less content moderation on the bird app than we’ve experienced under an Agrawal-led Twitter. Only time will tell if that ends up being a good thing and it largely depends on which of Twitter’s current content moderation policies gets rolled back. But with Musk reportedly helming Twitter for the first few months after the acquisition completes, a reduction in content moderation seems certain now.

And the acquisition itself also seems to be on more solid footing these days. Another SEC filing (filed on Thursday), stated that Musk had secured over $7 billion in funding from investors for his acquisition. The filing also mentioned Jack Dorsey, the former CEO and co-founder of Twitter, and said that Musk was discussing with Dorsey the “possibility of contributing” his shares “at or immediately prior to the closing of the merger.” CNBC’s Faber has said that Dorsey may back the acquisition.

If so, that would align with Dorsey’s recently tweeted support of Musk’s takeover. And it would make Musk’s hinted changes to the social media platform that much more likely.

Editors' Recommendations

Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
Elon Musk says he’s appointed a new Twitter CEO
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

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.

Read more
Elon Musk threatens to sue Microsoft over AI training
tesla and spacex ceo elon musk stylized image

Shortly after reports emerged on Wednesday that Microsoft is about to remove Twitter from its ad platform, Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired back with the threat of a lawsuit, claiming the computer giant illegally used Twitter’s data, such as users’ tweets, to train its artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

“They trained illegally using Twitter data,” Musk tweeted, adding: “Lawsuit time.”

Read more
Elon Musk: Owning Twitter has been a ‘roller coaster’ and ‘quite painful’
Elon Musk.

UPDATE: After more than an hour of Musk taking questions and with around 3 million people listening live, the interview came to a close at 10:10 p.m. PT.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed to an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night. It took place at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco with BBC journalist James Clayton and was streamed live on Twitter Spaces, the platform's audio chatroom feature.

Read more