Elon Musk said on Thursday that he has hired a female executive who will replace him as the CEO of Twitter but didn't reveal the name. However, according to reports, Musk has roped in NBCUniversal's head of advertising Linda Yaccarino for the top job. Musk has been serving as Twitter's CEO since he acquired the company for $44 billion last October.
However, in recent months, he had hinted at leaving the post and hiring a new CEO for the company. On Thursday, he finally made the announcement, without officially announcing the name of the person set to replace him, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Twitter's New Boss
Yaccarino, who oversees global advertising and partnerships at NBCU and has held the position for more than ten years, is in talks to lead the social network, The Wall Street Journal. This came as Musk revealed that he has already hired a female boss for his company.
"Excited to announce that I've hired a new CEO for X/Twitter," Musk tweeted. "She will be starting in ~6 weeks!"
The billionaire continued by announcing that he would take on the roles of executive chairman and chief technology officer, "overseeing product, software, & sysops."
"My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO (chief technology officer), overseeing product, software & sysops."
However, Musk has not yet revealed the identity of his new CEO. He has laid off almost 70 percent of Twitter's workforce, including its entire leadership team, since purchasing the company for $44 billion.
Yaccarino has worked for NBCU for more than 10 years and was instrumental in setting up the Peacock streaming service, which is ad-supported.
According to an NBCU spokesman, Yaccarino is practicing nonstop for an upfront pitch to advertisers, as reported by the Journal.
The leadership transition will be the most recent significant step in Musk's transformation of Twitter. The billionaire has been certain for months that he will leave day-to-day management once he has identified a competent replacement.
Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX.
Big Change
According to court documents filed in April, Twitter Inc. no longer existed as a separate entity and had merged with a brand-new company called X Corp., according to reports from Bloomberg and other media agencies.
Musk has called his purchase of Twitter an "accelerant" for his aspirations to create a super-app that would be comparable to Tencent's WeChat, which gives users access to a variety of services including payments, food delivery, and more.
Earlier this year, Musk indicated that he intended to step down from the position soon, though he added that he anticipated naming a CEO "probably toward the end of the year."
Musk famously asked his Twitter followers in December of last year whether they thought he should keep running the social media site. "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" Musk tweeted at the time. "After that, I will just run the software and servers teams."
Following Thursday's announcement, Tesla's shares jumped by more than 2 percent, indicating that investors approved of the decision.
