Elon Musk, the billionaire investor, is stepping down as the CEO of Twitter and will focus on other roles in the company. He recently hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, to take over the role in less than two months. He confirmed the news in a tweet and stated that he would remain with the company in executive roles. Yaccarino is a long-time media executive who previously headed advertising and partnerships at Comcast’s NBCUniversal. She will be primarily focused on the business side of things while Musk concentrates on products and technologies.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and has been running it since. However, he always maintained that this was a temporary occupation. After the acquisition, he implemented organizational restructuring which included massive layoffs to cut costs. He later explained that “turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter … If you don’t care that much about censorship, then you can really let go [of a] lot of people.”
Despite previously stating that he does not want to be the CEO of any company and that he views himself as an engineer, Elon Musk remains the top executive at U.S. electric car maker Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX.
He plans to create his own artificial intelligence (AI) platform called “Truthgpt” to rival the offerings of tech giants in the field. Musk has always been a proponent of AI, but he has also expressed concern over its potential misuse.
The news of Musk stepping down from Twitter has come as a surprise to many, and people are curious to see what direction Yaccarino will take the company in. It is unclear whether Musk will continue to be directly involved in determining Twitter’s policies after his resignation.
What is clear is that Musk has made significant policy changes for Twitter, some of which have been met with criticism. He has been trying to convince users to become paid subscribers and advertisers to return to the platform. With Yaccarino at the helm, it remains to be seen how Musk's vision for Twitter will be implemented in the coming years.
