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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Lifestyle
Vassia Barba & Cian O'Broin

Billionaire Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO with female boss to take over

Elon Musk will step down as Twitter CEO, with a new female boss due to succeed him, the billionaire announced.

The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur revealed he has hired a woman to take the reins, however he is yet to disclose her name, The Mirror reported.

Musk, who purchased Twitter in October 2022, and quickly axed a significant portion of its working force, announced the news in a tweet, informing that the new chief executive officer will begin in six weeks.

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He said: "Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!"

He stressed that his role will form that of a chief executive & CTO, overseeing "product, software and syspos."

His post, which was tweeted at 8:48pm BST, brought thousands of retweets and likes within minutes, and Twitter's shares jumped more than 2 per cent immediately after the former world's richest man brought the news to light.

The decision comes amid spiking controversy over the leadership and way forward of the highly influential micro-blogging platform.

He has held the position for seven months, after buying the social media company for $44 billion. His tenure has been marked by massive layoffs and a series of changes involving verified profiles, removal of bots and blue ticks.

A total of 1,500 employees were laid off from about 8,000 previously, with the billionaire describing it as something that "had to be done."

In mid-November, he expressed to a Delaware court in the US that he does not want to be the CEO.

While testifying, Musk said, “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time.”

In December, he pledged: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.”

Last November, he was questioned in court about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter.

Musk said at the time he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an "engineer."

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