Linda Yaccarino stepping down as CEO of Elon Musk's X
After two years at the helm, Linda Yaccarino is stepping down from Elon Musk's social media platform X.
After two years at the helm, Linda Yaccarino is stepping down from Elon Musk's social media platform X.
Musk tapped Yaccarino to replace him as CEO in 2023, shortly after purchasing the platform, then called Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022. He said Yaccarino would focus primarily on Twitter's business while he focused on product design and new technology.
In a post on X, Yaccarino called the position the "opportunity of a lifetime," and said "the best is yet to come" for the platform. She did not provide a reason for her departure.
"I’m incredibly proud of the X team - the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable," Yaccarino said.
Before joining X, Yaccarino was chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, where she oversaw 2,000 employees and $13 billion in annual advertising revenue. Her vast connections to marketers were viewed as a potential boost to the company, which had a strained relationship with advertisers after Musk's takeover.
Musk in late 2023 used an expletive toward advertisers who left the platform after he amplified antisemitic conspiracy theories. By late 2024, investment firm Fidelity said X's value had plummeted nearly 80% since Musk's takeover, with Yaccarino noting that advertiser boycotts had cost the company billions of dollars.
Yaccarino led the company through a series of changes, working toward Musk's vision of an "everything app." On X, she said the team worked "relentlessly" on changes like Community Notes and bringing the X Money Account ‒ a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments feature ‒ to the platform. Yaccarino in January said X had partnered with Visa for the service, set to launch later this year.
Yaccarino in May said 96% of the company's top advertisers had returned to the platform over the past year. That same month, eMarketer predicted that X would see ad revenue growth for the first time in four years, but still only earn about half of what it did in 2021.
On X, Yaccarino said she was "immensely grateful" to Musk "for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App."
Her departure comes as the billionaire faces backlash from President Donald Trump after announcing a new political party, falling Tesla sales and challenges with Grok, a chatbot from Musk's artificial intelligence start-up, xAI. The chatbot on July 8 praised Adolf Hilter and used antisemitic phrases before xAI updated the model.
Earlier this year, xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal.
(This story was updated to add more information.)