Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday evening he will step down as the company’s CEO, but only when he identifies a successor, directly addressing for the first time a Twitter poll he created this week in which millions of users voted for his ouster.
In a tweet, Musk said he would resign “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”
He added that following his resignation as CEO, Musk would “run the software & servers teams” at Twitter, indicating he may continue to exercise significant influence on the company’s decision-making.
This is the first time Musk has mentioned steeping down as chief of the social media platform, after Twitter users voted decisively in a poll for him to step down, which the billionaire launched on Sunday evening.
Wall Street calls for Musk to step down had been growing for weeks and recently even Tesla Inc TSLA.O bulls have questioned his focus on the social media platform and whether that is distracting him from properly steering the electric vehicle business, where he is central to product design and engineering.
Musk has himself admitted he had too much on his plate, and said he would look for a Twitter CEO. He said on Sunday, though, that there was no successor and that “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.” — Reuters
The announcement comes after more than a day of silence about the poll following its outcome. On Monday, after more than 17 million users had voted — 57.5% of whom said Musk should resign — the billionaire executive addressed the results only indirectly. He suggested that future Twitter polls could be restricted to paid users of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.
Musk’s poll asking users whether he should resign as CEO came after a massive backlash to Twitter’s abrupt suspension of several journalists who cover him, as well as Twitter’s decision to ban, and then un-ban, links to other social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon, a fast-growing Twitter rival that has octupled in size since October.
