Twitter owner Elon Musk said Thursday that he has hired a new chief executive officer to run the social media platform.
Musk made the announcement in a tweet, but did not immediately name the new executive. He also said he would scale back his own day-to-day involvement with the site, serving as Twitter’s chief executive and chief technology officer with oversight of product changes.
Musk seemed to offer a small hint about the next CEO, saying that «she» would start in about 6 weeks.
Investors in some of Musk’s other companies, including Tesla, have expressed concern for months that the tech billionaire was too distracted by Twitter and was shying away from his other responsibilities.
Tesla’s stock price spiked about 2% immediately after the tweet.
Musk bought Twitter in October for $44 billion after a months-long fight with his previous management over price and the company’s health.
He’s made sweeping changes in the more than six months since then, firing the vast majority of Twitter employees, reinstating the accounts of suspended users, including former President Donald Trump, and loosening the rules about when Twitter allows potentially objectionable material.
Under Musk, Twitter also removed its account verification program for notable public figures, instead reserving blue and white checkmarks for people who signed up for its premium service.
It’s unclear if the new CEO will continue to seek major changes, but she will break precedent in at least one respect: Twitter has never had a female CEO since its founding in 2006.
Musk now likely has more time for his other companies. He is the chief executive of automaker Tesla and of SpaceX, the rocket and engineering company that last month launched the largest rocket ever built as part of a plan to eventually send people to Mars.
Even other tech investors have questioned Musk’s wisdom in spending so much time on a social media product given its other functions.
«Can you think of one prominent person who is currently wasting their talent on software when they could be working in heavy and manufacturing industry?» investor paul graham Musk asked dryly on Twitter last month.
Musk is the second richest person in the world, with a net worth of $168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.