Musk’s pick reportedly will be NBCUniversal’s head of advertising Linda Yaccarino, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the situation.
Musk, who has served as Twitter’s top boss since he acquired the company for $44 billion last October, did not initially say whom he had chosen for the key role.
“Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk tweeted. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks!”
The mogul added that he would transition to a role as executive chairman and chief technology officer “overseeing product, software & sysops.”
Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023
My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.
Yaccarino has been at NBCU for more than a decade and helped launch the company’s ad-supported Peacock streaming service.
An NBCU spokesman said Yaccarino is in back-to-back rehearsals for an upfront presentation to advertisers, the Journal reported.
The leadership change will mark the latest major step in Musk’s overhaul of Twitter. The billionaire has said for months that he would step away from day-to-day operations once he had found a suitable candidate.
In April, court filings revealed that Twitter Inc. no longer existed as an independent entity and had merged with a new firm called X Corp., Bloomberg and other outlets reported.
Musk has described his acquisition of Twitter as an “accelerant” for this plans to build a super-app similar to Tencent-owned WeChat, which allows users access to an array of services ranging from payments to food delivery and beyond.
Earlier this year, Musk reiterated that he planned to leave the role in the near future — though he said he expected to name a CEO “probably toward the end of the year.”
Last December, Musk infamously polled his Twitter follows on whether he should continue leading the social media platform.
“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.”
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