Elon Musk says he found a woman to lead Twitter as new CEO – MyStateline.com

Elon Musk announced on Thursday that he had found a new CEO for Twitter (now called Company X), but that CEO was a woman. He did not give her name, but said she would be back in about six weeks.

Musk bought Twitter last fall and has been running it ever since, but has long insisted he is not the company’s chief executive officer. The Tesla billionaire said in a tweet on Thursday that he would be transitioning his own role to Twitter’s executive chairman and chief technology officer.

In mid-November, just weeks after buying the social media platform for $44 billion, he told a Delaware court that he didn’t want to be CEO of any company.

“I plan to spend less time on Twitter and over time find someone else to run Twitter,” Musk said during his testimony.

More than a month later, in December, he tweeted, “I will step down as CEO as soon as I find someone stupid enough to take the job.” The pledge comes after millions of Twitter users called on him to step down in a Twitter poll that the billionaire himself made and pledged to abide by.

In February, he said at a conference that he expected to find a San Francisco-based Twitter CEO “probably towards the end of the year.”

Tesla shares rose about 2% on Thursday after Musk’s announcement. Shareholders of the electric-car company are concerned about how much of his attention is on Twitter.

Last November, he was questioned in court about how he divides his time between Tesla and other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in a Delaware Chance Court trial over shareholder objections to a potential $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of an electric car company.

Musk said he had no intention of becoming CEO of Tesla, nor did he want to be the CEO of another company, and that he wanted to see himself as an engineer. Musk also said at the time that Twitter’s restructuring would be completed in the next week or so. About half a year has passed since you said that.

Musk’s time at the helm of Twitter was chaotic, with promises and declarations that were either withdrawn or not kept at all. From day one, he laid off the company’s top executives, followed by about 80% of its workforce. He overturned the platform’s verification system, curtailing content controls and safeguards against the spread of misinformation.

Late last year, Musk teased his Twitter followers by expressing pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying he would “like a lot of pain” running a company “on the fast track to bankruptcy.” It must be,” he said.

“Nobody wants a job that can actually keep Twitter alive. No successor,” Musk tweeted at the time.