Elon Musk to Resign as Twitter CEO: He Has Chosen His Replacement

VIVA – One of the billionaires in the world, Elon Musk announced on Thursday that he will resign as CEO of Twitter, and he has chosen his replacement. 

"Excited to announce that I've 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 & syops." Musk wrote on his official Twitter account on May 12, 2023. 

Surprisingly, Musk chose a female candidate as his replacement. However, the new figure is not yet known for sure, but there is a rumor that NBCUniversal global advertising chair Linda Yaccarino is in advanced talks for the role.

Twitter has taken time away from Musk's other ventures, of which he is also CEO of electric car company Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. Additional businesses include brain technology company Neuralink, as well as clothing line The Boring Company.

Musk acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion and subsequently led the company into "chaos". 

He has largely reversed efforts to police inflammatory content sites and started charging users money for the blue checkmarks that previously signaled that a user's identity had been verified. 

Meanwhile, many advertisers left Twitter for fear of their marketing messages being placed next to controversial posts.

Musk also laid off a lot of staff while many others quit on their own. He said in an interview with the BBC last month that employees were down to less than 1,000, down about 80% compared to the number he inherited last year. 

Investors and banks that helped Musk finance his Twitter acquisition will almost certainly welcome new leadership. More stability and a clearer strategy could help bring back some lost advertisers.

Moreover, shares of Musk's other company, Tesla, jumped more than 2% after he announced the new Twitter leadership.

Musk's interest in Twitter has been a sore point among Tesla investors, to the point that a group of shareholders with more than $1.5 billion in stock between them wrote a letter demanding a meeting with the board to discuss Musk's performance at the electric car company.