Musk says he has found new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk said on Thursday he has found a new chief executive for Twitter without naming the person, adding that he will transition to the role of chief technology officer of the social media platform within the next few weeks.

“Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!,” Musk said in a tweet.

Musk, who said in November he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media firm, has previously not named any prospective candidates.

The billionaire said he will transition to being executive chair, along with the role of CTO, where he would oversee product, software & sysops.

Tesla Inc’s shares closed 2.1% higher on Thursday, as the move allayed some concerns of the electric-vehicle maker’s investors about the time that Musk was devoting to turning around Twitter. Musk also runs rocket company SpaceX.

“The boat anchor called Twitter is loosened from Musk’s ankle. Now he can get back to spending more time creating value at Tesla,” Craig Irwin, analyst at Roth MKM, said.

In a Twitter poll started by Musk in December, 57.5% users voted for him to step down as CEO of the social media platform.

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk had said then.

The billionaire’s first two weeks as the new Twitter owner in October were marked by rapid change. He quickly fired Twitter’s previous CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior leaders and then laid off half its staff in November.

Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist has said he took over Twitter to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division.

He also said he would “defeat” spam bots on Twitter, a key area of his tussle with Twitter’s board over his back and forth on the US$44 billion buyout of the company.