Elon Musk Says He Wants New Twitter CEO by Year’s End. We’ll See

Elon Musk is still planning to step down as Twitter’s CEO, and “guesses” he will seek out a replacement by the end of 2023, the billionaire said over video conference at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

“I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out,” Musk said. “I’m guessing probably towards the end of the year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company. I think it should be in a stable position at the end of this year.”

Musk has been promising to hand over the reins as CEO since he took control of the platform last fall. “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” he said in a November court filing. A month later, he posted a poll asking Twitter users whether he should step down. Twitter users said yes, and Musk wrote that he’ll resign “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.” CNBC reported the same day that he was “actively searching” for a replacement.

Elon Musk says a lot of things, though. He’s made a series of ambitious predictions about his companies and more general societal advancements like self-driving vehicles that didn’t come to bear. His tenure as Twitter’s chief executive has been characterized by a steady stream of vows to “look into” and fix various issues he can’t seem to fully parse. Twitter Blue, the beleaguered subscription plan intended to help pull the company out of financial peril, hasn’t performed well, pulling in only 180,000 subscribers after two months.

This is all to say that it’s hard to take Musk at his word about bringing in a new CEO by the end of the year, especially when he says doing so is contingent on Twitter becoming “financially healthy.” Musk’s ego could get in the way, too. He clearly relishes having absolute power over the platform, so much so that he’s even using it to boost his own tweets. Platformer reported on Tuesday that after President Biden’s Super Bowl tweet outperformed Musk’s own, he threatened to fire engineers if they didn’t alter the algorithm so his tweets drew more engagement.

Meanwhile…

From Rolling Stone US.