Elon Musk said on Thursday that he has hired a woman to lead Twitter, or X Corp. as it is now known, as its new CEO. Although he did not give her name, he did say that she would start work in about six weeks.
Musk has long maintained that he is not the company's long-term CEO despite having purchased Twitter last fall and controlled it since. The Tesla billionaire said in a tweet on Thursday that he will transition to being Twitter's executive chairman and chief technology officer.
Just a few weeks after purchasing the social networking platform for $44 billion, in the middle of November, he declared in front of a Delaware court that he did not want to lead any corporation.
"I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job," more than a month later, he tweeted in December.
The billionaire himself created a Twitter poll, which he vowed to follow, in which millions of users begged him to resign.
He stated at a conference in February that he expected Twitter, situated in San Francisco, to hire a CEO "probably toward the end of this year."
Analysts who follow Twitter's business were pleased with the news, even if they don't yet know who would take his place. Under Musk's erratic leadership, Twitter's advertising revenue has suffered, but the billionaire claimed to the BBC last month that the business is now "roughly" breaking even.
"A new CEO is the only way forward for Twitter," said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg.
"The single biggest problem with Twitter's ad business was Elon Musk. As he steps back, Twitter can begin to unravel Musk's personal brand from the company's corporate image and attempt to regain trust among advertisers. The success of those efforts will depend on who takes over, but it's difficult to imagine that the new CEO could be more controversial or damaging to Twitter's ad business than Musk has been."
Following Musk's announcement on Thursday, Tesla stock increased by roughly 2%. The amount of time he spends on Twitter has alarmed the shareholders of the electric car company.
He was questioned in court about how he divides his time between Tesla and his other businesses, such as SpaceX and Twitter, in November of last year.
Musk was called to the stand as a witness in the Delaware Court of Chancery trial concerning a shareholder's objection to his alleged $55 billion salary package as CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer.
Musk claimed that he never planned to lead Tesla and that he also didn't want to lead any other businesses, preferring to think of himself as an engineer.
At the time, Musk also predicted that Twitter's organizational restructure would be finished within a week or so. He mentioned that almost six months ago now.
During his turbulent time in charge of Twitter, Musk made a number of declarations and pledges that he later reneged on or never followed through with.
Musk joked about the prospects for a new CEO on Twitter late last year, saying the individual "must like pain a lot" to lead a business that "has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy."
"No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor," Musk tweeted.
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