Elon Musk Says He Will Resign as Twitter CEO but Remain Involved in Key Operations

Elon Musk attends the opening ceremony of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, March 22, 2022. Patrick Pleul/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo/File Photo

Elon Musk said Tuesday he'll step down as Twitter CEO but remain involved in operations when he can find a suitable 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 said on Twitter.

On Dec. 18, Musk ran a poll asking whether he should step down from the role less than two months after he bought the social network, pledging that he’d abide by its results.

The final tally showed that 57.5 percent voted in favor of Musk’s departure. Fans of Musk noted that the poll might have attracted bots to vote “yes.”

Musk, who didn’t elaborate on his remarks that a suitable candidate would be “foolish” to take the role, has been regularly attacked by left-leaning media outlets, journalists, and politicians.

Twitter Files

Since taking over in late October, Musk has endorsed a selection of independent journalists to access and report on records of internal Twitter discussions that paint a picture of a censorship machine that collaborated with government agencies to restrict material, particularly from conservative-leaning accounts.

Musk granted access to a trove of documents to several individuals—investigative reporter Matt Taibbi, journalist Bari Weiss, author Michael Shellenberger, and journalist Lee Fang—who have been releasing them in tranches dubbed the “Twitter Files.”

The series of reports, published first on Twitter, have focused on Twitter’s censorship tools, the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, the deplatforming of former President Donald Trump, how Twitter executives worked with the FBI and Intelligence Community to censor users, and how the platform helped the U.S. military’s influence operations.

A phone displaying Elon Musk's Twitter page where he is conducting a survey about his future as the head of the company, in a photo illustration taken in Los Angeles on Dec. 18, 2022. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

Any New CEO ‘Must Like Pain a Lot’

Before the poll closed, Musk engaged with several posts about him potentially leaving the top job.

Musk responded to one user who suggested Musk hire a new CEO, saying, “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”

In response to podcast host Lex Fridman, who offered to do the job, Musk said that any new Twitter CEO “must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?”

Last month, Musk told a Delaware court that he’d reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find someone else to take over as its chief.

Tom Omizek contributed to this report.