‘Will resign as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!’: Says Twitter CEO Musk

 

Washington: Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he will step down as chief executive of Twitter after finding a replacement. ‘I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams’, Musk wrote on Twitter. 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 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’.

A poll by Musk, on whether he should quit as Twitter CEO showed the majority of users of the social media platform who took part voted in favour of the move, after the poll ended on Monday. About 57.5% votes were for ‘Yes’, while 42.5% were against the idea of Musk stepping down as the head of Twitter, according to the poll the billionaire launched on Sunday evening. Over 17.5 million people took part in the vote. Musk said on Sunday he will abide by the results of the poll, but did not give details on when he would step down if results said he should.

Musk, who lost his title as the world’s richest person earlier this month, also founded tunneling enterprise Boring Company, backs medical device company Neuralink and heads rocket company SpaceX. Tesla investors have been concerned Musk has been spreading himself too thin following the Twitter deal. Tesla has already lost nearly 60% of its value this year, as, like other carmakers, it battles supply chain issues and increasing competition in the EV space.

Last month, Musk told a Delaware court that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company. Replying to one Twitter user’s comment on a possible change in CEO, Musk said on Sunday ‘There is no successor’. The poll comes after Twitter’s Sunday policy update, which prohibited accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social media firms and content that contains links or usernames for rival platforms.