The billionaire Twitter owner says he wants to make sure the platform is in a “financially healthy place” before finding a new CEO.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has suggested he could hand over the baton as the tech giant’s chief executive by the end of this year.
Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, said Wednesday the end of 2023 is a “good time” to find someone else to run the social media giant.
“I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure that it’s in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out,” Musk said during a virtual appearance at the World Government Summit in Dubai after being asked whether he had found a new CEO and when that person would be hired.
Musk added that “probably towards the end of this year would be a good time” as he expects the company to be in a stable position by then.
In December, Musk said on Twitter that he would step down as CEO “as soon as I find someone stupid enough to take the job!”
Musk, who also runs Tesla and is among the richest men in the world, made the remarks after a majority of respondents in a Twitter poll voted to resign.
Musk’s leadership of the platform has divided users, with conservatives welcoming his stated commitment to free speech and many liberals raising concerns about rising misinformation and hate speech.
Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, has pledged to promote diversity of views on Twitter and challenge what he sees as liberal biases that prevailed under the platform’s previous leadership.
Since taking office, Musk has fired about half of the Twitter workforce, overhauled its moderation policies, and restored the accounts of suspended celebrities like former US President Donald Trump.
Critics have accused Musk of allowing extremists to spread hate speech on the platform and censor criticism he dislikes, including suspending a number of journalists he accused of slandering him and his family.
The platform has also experienced repeated glitches and outages under the watch of the billionaire tech mogul.
In his speech in Dubai on Wednesday, Musk, who described his ownership of Twitter as a “roller coaster ride,” hailed the platform as a valuable communication tool despite recent difficulties.
“As a forum for communication, it’s great. And I would just encourage more communication … to speak in an authentic voice,” he said.
“Sometimes people have someone who’s their kind of Twitter manager or something. People should just do their own tweets…I think that’s the way it goes.”