Linda Yaccarino announced on July 9 that she is stepping down as CEO of X (formerly known as Twitter). She had been in the role for just over two years, after being appointed by Elon Musk in mid-2023. Yaccarino was brought in to help stabilize the company’s business, rebuild relationships with advertisers, and support Musk’s vision of turning X into an ‘everything app’.
During her time at X, Yaccarino was often viewed as the calm and steady leader brought in to balance Elon Musk’s unpredictable approach. Under her leadership, the social media platform pursued aggressive outreach to brands, introduced new tools and features designed to attract advertisers, and filed lawsuits against advertising watchdogs, accusing them of unfairly pressuring companies to boycott the platform.
Despite these efforts though, the platform continued to face serious challenges, both on business and tech front. Advertising revenue has struggled to recover fully, and the company has faced growing competition from other platforms and ongoing regulatory scrutiny. Also, Musk’s frequent public controversies, including inflammatory posts and changes to moderation policies, continually made Yaccarino’s job much more difficult. Before joining X, Yaccarino had built a strong reputation in the advertising industry through her successful career at NBCUniversal.
In her official statement posted on the platform, Yaccarino called her time as CEO ‘the opportunity of a lifetime’. She also expressed gratitude to Musk for the trust he placed in her and praised the work her team had done during a difficult period for the company.
“We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence. This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with xAI,” Linda Yaccarino said.
Yaccarino’s resignation was clearly unexpected, and she did not provide a specific reason for her decision to step down. The timing of her departure becomes even more notable as the platform also faces increasing controversy surrounding its AI (Grok) features. Recently, Grok was found generating content that included praise for Adolf Hitler, triggering widespread backlash. In response, xAI said that it is taking down ‘inappropriate posts’ made by its Grok chatbot. Notably, the CEO’s exit comes months after xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing the platform at $33 billion.
Meanwhile, Musk responded to Yaccarino’s resignation with a short message on X, thanking her for her work but offering no details on who might replace her. As of now, no successor has been named, and it remains unclear whether Musk will appoint another CEO or take a more direct role in leading the company once again.
Yaccarino’s exit also adds to a growing list of high-level departures from Elon Musk’s companies. For example, last month at Tesla, Omead Afshar (a close aide to Musk who oversaw sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe) stepped down as the company struggled with slowing demand for electric vehicles. Similarly, at xAI, Uday Ruddarraju (head of infrastructure engineering) departed after overseeing the rapid deployment of the Colossus supercomputer. He has reportedly now joined the rival firm OpenAI.
