X CEO Linda Yaccarino Steps Down After 2 Years

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said Wednesday (July 9) that she is stepping down from that position after two years, without giving a reason for the move.

In a Wednesday post on X, Yaccarino said she is grateful to X owner Elon Musk for entrusting her with the responsibility of “protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

“I’m incredibly proud of the X team — the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” Yaccarino said in the post.

Yaccarino highlighted the social media platform’s work to prioritize the safety of users, especially children; restore advertiser confidence; add innovations like Community Notes and “soon” X Money; and “enter a new chapter” with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company that acquired his X.

“X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal,” Yaccarino wrote in the post. “We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users, business partners, and the most innovative team in the world.”

“I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world,” Yaccarino wrote.

In a reply to Yaccarino’s post, Musk said: “Thank you for your contributions.”

Musk announced in a May 2023 post on the social media platform that Yaccarino would join X — then known as Twitter — in about six weeks. He said Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal ad executive, would focus primarily on business operations while Musk, who was CEO, would focus on product design and new technology.

In September 2023, Yaccarino said 1,500 advertisers, including 90% of the company’s top 100 advertisers, had returned to the platform in the previous 12 weeks. Retaining advertisers had been a struggle for the social media platform due to concerns about appearing next to unsuitable content.

Yaccarino said in January that Visa was the first partner for the X Money Account that will debut later this year and that the partnership is the “first of many big announcements about X Money this year.”

When xAI acquired X in a multibillion-dollar deal in March, it was reported that X’s finances seemed to be improving and that its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization aligned more or less with the time just before Musk acquired Twitter.