Elon Musk Hires CEO for X, Will Focus on Product

Elon Musk has hired a new CEO for X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

The new, unidentified CEO will start in six weeks, and Musk will transition to a new role, Musk said in a Thursday (May 11) tweet.

“My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops,” Musk said in the tweet.

This announcement comes about seven months after Musk acquired the social media platform and said he plans to turn it into an “everything app.”

Musk walked into Twitter headquarters as new owner and CEO on Oct. 27, 2002, having fired the senior leadership and changed his Twitter bio to read “Chief Twit.”

Four days later, on Oct. 31, Musk let all nine members of the board of directors, who had been directors before the acquisition, go and become sole director of the company.

On Nov. 8, 2022, Twitter announced that it was reducing its staff by 3,700 people.

About a week later, it was reported that Musk told a court that he aims to finish an organizational restructuring of Twitter and eventually find a new leader for the firm.

Testifying in a Delaware court during a trial related to his pay package at Tesla, Musk said of Twitter: “There’s an initial burst of activity need post-acquisition to reorganize the company. But then I expect to reduce my time at Twitter,” Reuters reported Nov. 16.

Tesla investors had expressed concern about the amount of time Musk was devoting to the Twitter reorganization, according to the report.

On Dec. 20, 2022, CNBC reported that Musk was looking for someone to succeed him as CEO. The search began before he polled Twitter users on Dec. 18 on whether he should step down as CEO, according to the report. (Almost 60% voted Yes.)

In April, Twitter became X as the social media platform merged with a shell company of that name.

X is also the name of Musk’s long envisioned “everything app.” Just before closing the deal to purchase Twitter, Musk tweeted that buying the company was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

As PYMNTS reported April 12, industry observers say the move to X’s ownership signals a continuance of Musk’s plans to transform the social media platform into a $250 billion super app payments company.