Elon Musk said Thursday he has found a new CEO for Twitter, or X Corp. as it鈥檚 now called 鈥 and it's a woman. He did not name her but said she will be starting in about six weeks.
Musk, , has long insisted he is not the company鈥檚 permanent CEO. The Tesla billionaire said in a tweet Thursday that his role will transition to being Twitter's executive chairman and chief technology officer.
In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying the social media platform for $44 billion, he told a Delaware court that he does not want to be the CEO of any company.
While testifying, Musk said 鈥淚 expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time.鈥
More than a month later, he tweeted in December: 鈥淚 will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.鈥 asked him to step down in a Twitter poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by.
In February, he told a conference he anticipated finding a CEO for San Francisco-based Twitter 鈥減robably toward the end of this year.鈥
Analysts who follow Twitter's business welcomed the news even without knowing who the replacement will be. Twitter's advertising business has taken a hit under Musk's mercurial rule, though the billionaire told BBC last month that the company is now 鈥渞oughly鈥 breaking even.
鈥淎 new CEO is the only way forward for Twitter," said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. "The single biggest problem with Twitter鈥檚 ad business was Elon Musk. As he steps back, Twitter can begin to unravel Musk鈥檚 personal brand from the company鈥檚 corporate image and attempt to regain trust among advertisers. The success of those efforts will depend on who takes over, but it鈥檚 difficult to imagine that the new CEO could be more controversial or damaging to Twitter鈥檚 ad business than Musk has been.鈥
Shares of Tesla rose about 2% Thursday after Musk made the announcement. Shareholders of the electric car company have been concerned about how much of his attention is being spent on Twitter.
Last November, he was questioned in court about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk over a shareholder鈥檚 challenge to his potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn鈥檛 want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer. Musk also said at the time that he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It鈥檚 been nearly six months since he said that.
Musk's tenure at Twitter's helm has been , and he's made various promises and proclamations he's backtracked or never followed up on. He began his first day firing the company's top executives, followed by . He's upended the platform's and has scaled back content moderation and safeguards against the .
Bantering with Twitter followers late last year, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person 鈥渕ust like pain a lot鈥 to run a company that 鈥渉as been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.鈥
鈥淣o one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,鈥 Musk tweeted at the time.
