Elon Musk stated on Thursday he has discovered a brand new chief govt for Twitter with out naming the particular person and that he’ll transition to the function of chief know-how officer of the social media platform throughout the subsequent few weeks.
“Excited to announce that I’ve employed a brand new CEO for X/Twitter. She will likely be beginning in ~6 weeks!,” Musk stated in a tweet.
Musk has beforehand not named any potential candidates, and it was unclear who he had named as his successor, though Blind, an nameless messaging app for tech staff, was ripe with hypothesis.
Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and a high govt at Musk’ brain-chip startup Neuralink, Shivon Zilis, have been among the many names being mentioned on Blind, in line with a former worker who considered the feedback.
High feminine executives from Musk’s different corporations, reminiscent of SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and Tesla Inc TSLA.O Chair Robyn Denholm is also named, in line with Jason Benowitz, senior portfolio supervisor at CI Roosevelt.
Musk stated he’ll transition to the function of Twitter’s govt chair, together with the function of CTO, the place he would oversee product, software program & sysops.
Tesla shares closed 2.1 % greater on Thursday and analysts stated the announcement helped alleviate some investor considerations round Musk’s energetic involvement at Twitter.
The electrical-vehicle maker’s shares had taken a success after Musk took over Twitter in October and buyers had stated the transfer might stretch the billionaire skinny.
“The boat anchor known as Twitter is loosened from Musk’s ankle. Now he can get again to spending extra time creating worth at Tesla,” Craig Irwin, analyst at Roth MKM, stated.
In a Twitter ballot began by Musk in December, 57.5 % customers voted for him to step down as CEO of the social media platform.
“I’ll resign as CEO as quickly as I discover somebody silly sufficient to take the job!” Musk had stated then.
The billionaire’s first two weeks as the brand new Twitter proprietor in October have been marked by fast change. He rapidly fired Twitter’s earlier CEO Parag Agrawal and different senior leaders after which laid off half its workers in November.
Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist has stated he took over Twitter to stop the platform from changing into an echo chamber for hate and division.
He additionally stated he would “defeat” spam bots on the platform, a key space of his tussle with Twitter’s board over his forwards and backwards on the $44 billion buyout of the corporate.