Elon Musk says he will step down as CEO of Twitter, but not right away | CNN Business

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Twitter owner Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday evening that he will step down as the company’s CEO, but only after he identifies a successor, directly addressing for the first time a Twitter poll he created this week in which millions of users vote in favor of his dismissal.

In a tweetMusk said he would resign “as soon as I find someone dumb enough to take the job!”

He added that after his resignation as CEO, Musk would “lead the software and server teams” at Twitter, indicating that he could continue to exert significant influence on the company’s decision-making.

The announcement comes after more than a day of silence on the poll following its result. On Monday, after more than 17 million users had voted, 57.5% of whom said Musk should resign, the billionaire executive addressed the results only indirectly. He suggested that future Twitter polls could be restricted to paid users of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.

Musk’s poll asking users if he should step down as CEO came after a massive backlash to Twitter’s abrupt suspension of several journalists who cover him, as well as Twitter’s decision to ban, and then disable, links to other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram. and Mastodon, a fast-growing Twitter rival that has grown eightfold since October.