Twitter owner Elon Musk has found someone to replace him as the company’s CEO, but he hasn’t revealed who it is.
Musk tweeted Thursday that the new CEO will step into the role at some point in the next six weeks.
“Happy to announce that I have hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk said in his tweet. “She starts in ~6 weeks!” But Musk made it clear that he will remain active in the company, adding that his role “will transition to being CEO and CTO, overseeing products, software and sysops.”
Immediately after acquiring Twitter in October in a deal valued at $44 billion, Musk fired then-CEO Parag Agrawal and assumed the role himself, briefly changing his Twitter bio description to “Chief Twit.”
Two months later, he ran a Twitter poll asking whether he should step down as CEO and vowed to abide by the result. Of the more than 17 million people who voted, just over 57% said yes, he should go. Musk responded to the result in typical fashion, tweeting: “I will step down as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”
Musk has been exposed to criticism from some investors in Tesla – a company that he, together with SpaceX, also leads – who expressed concern that Twitter had become a time-consuming distraction for the billionaire entrepreneur, taking him away from Tesla and causing the brand to suffer.
In a sign of the continued sensitivity of the issue, Tesla’s stock price rose on Thursday in response to Musk’s news that he had found a new CEO for the social media company.
After Musk’s chaotic and controversial tenure as Twitter CEO, many will be watching to see to what extent things change at the company when the new boss arrives in the coming weeks.
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