Musk made the announcement in a tweet but did not
immediately name the new executive. He also said he would reduce his own
day-to-day involvement with the site, serving as executive chair and as
Twitter's chief technology officer with oversight of product changes.
Musk appeared to offer one small hint about the next CEO,
saying that "she" would be starting in about 6 weeks.
Investors in some of Musk's other companies including Tesla
have expressed concern for months that the tech billionaire was too distracted
by Twitter and was short-changing his other responsibilities.
Tesla's share price spiked about 2% immediately after the
tweet.
Musk bought Twitter in October for $44 billion after a
monthslong fight with its prior management over the price and health of the
company.
He has made sweeping changes in the six-plus months since
then, laying off the vast majority of Twitter's employees, reinstating the
accounts of suspended users, including former President Donald Trump, and
loosening the rules of when Twitter allows potentially objectionable material.
Under Musk, Twitter also eliminated its program of verifying
accounts of notable public figures, instead reserving blue-and-white checkmarks
for people who've subscribed to its premium service.
It's not clear whether the new CEO will continue to seek
major changes, but she will be precedent-shattering in at least one respect:
Twitter has never had a female CEO since its founding in 2006.
Musk will now likely have more time for his other companies.
He is the CEO of the automaker Tesla and of SpaceX, the engineering and rocket
company that last month launched the largest rocket ever built as part of a
plan to eventually send people to Mars.
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
Even other tech investors have questioned the wisdom of Musk
spending so much time on a social media product given his other duties.
"Can you think of a prominent person who's currently
wasting his talents in software when he could be working on manufacturing and
heavy industries?" investor Paul Graham dryly asked Musk on Twitter last
month.
Musk is the world's second-wealthiest person, with a net
worth of $168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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