Elon Musk Hires New Twitter CEO as He Announces to Take Executive Chair, CTO Position

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that he has found a new chief executive for the social media platform without naming his replacement.

“Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!,” Musk said in a tweet.

Musk said he will transition to being “exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops”.

The move is likely to allay Tesla investors’ concerns, who have been increasingly worried about the time that Musk is devoting to turning around Twitter. Musk also runs rocket company SpaceX.

Tesla shares jumped 2.4 percent in volume spike on the news.

Musk, who said in November he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company, has previously not named any prospective candidates.

The billionaire’s first two weeks as the new Twitter owner in October were marked by rapid change. He quickly fired Twitter’s previous CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior leaders and then laid off half its staff in November.

Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, has said he took over Twitter to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division.

He also said he would “defeat” spam bots on Twitter, a key area of his tussle with Twitter’s board over his back and forth on the $54 billion (nearly Rs. 4,43,550 crore) buyout of the company.

© Thomson Reuters 2023