Elon Musk has announced that he is stepping down as chief executive of Twitter to make way for a new female boss.
Mr Musk said on Thursday that he has found a new CEO for the social media platform and that she will be starting in about six weeks.
“My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops,” he wrote in a tweet.
Mr Musk did not name the candidate.
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.
The move is likely to allay Tesla investors’ concerns, who have been increasingly worried about the time that Mr Musk is devoting to turning around Twitter.
Tesla Inc shares jumped 2.4 per cent in volume spike on the news.
Mr Musk, who said he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company, has previously not named any prospective candidates.
Mr Musk has been saying for nearly six months that he plans to find a new head for San Francisco-based Twitter.
In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying the social media platform for 44 billion US dollars (£38.4 billion), he told a Delaware court that he does not want to be the CEO of any company.
While testifying, Mr Musk said: “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time.”
More than a month later, he tweeted in December: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.”
The pledge came after millions of Twitter users 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 Twitter “probably toward the end of this year.”
The billionaire’s first two weeks as the new Twitter owner in October were marked by rapid change. He quickly fired Twitter’s previous CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior leaders and then laid off half its staff in November.
