Elon Musk ‘actively looking’ for Twitter CEO to replace him: report
Billionaire Elon Musk is “actively looking” for a new CEO at Twitter after users voted for him to step down from running the social media site, according to a report Tuesday.
Musk, who has served as Twitter CEO since buying the company for $44 billion in late October, is looking at potential candidates to be his permanent successor, CNBC’s David Faber reported, citing unnamed sources.
“No big surprise here — Musk is actively looking for a new CEO of Twitter. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that,” Faber said on “Squawk Box” on Tuesday morning. “As we’ve seen from his previous polls, oftentimes he sort of already knows the answer before he actually asks people to participate in said poll.”
“From everything I have heard, he has been actively looking, asking, trying to figure out who the candidate pool might actually be,” Faber added.
On Sunday, Musk asked his 120 million followers if he should “step down as head of Twitter” and promised to “abide by the results of this poll.” The poll drew more than 17.5 million votes, with 57.5% of respondents saying he should step down and 42.5% saying he should stay on.
Faber said he has “heard a lot of different names of potential candidates” from his sources, but would not reveal any possible replacements.
One name being bandied about is Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, according to Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino.
“Wall Street bankers w ties to @elonmusk say @JTLonsdale is high on Musk’s list to be possible new @Twitter CEO; unclear if offer has been extended or Lonsdale interested,” Gasparino tweeted Tuesday.
Gasparino said other potential candidate could come from “@PayPal Mafia,” the online payment company that Musk founded with among others Peter Thiel and had Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder, on its board.
Musk has yet to publicly indicate whether he has developed a short list of candidates. But some of Musk’s top advisers who have been active at Twitter since his acquisition are potential options, according to Bloomberg.
The outlet noted that investor Jason Calacanis, former PayPal executive David Sacks and Andreessen Horowitz partner Sriram Krishnan have all played an active role in Musk’s Twitter takeover.
On Sunday, Calacanis posted his own Twitter poll asking followers whether he, Sacks, a combination of the two or a different candidate should run the company.
In another tweet, Musk has indicated he was unsure of whether he could find a viable candidate to replace him.
“The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
The Post has reached out to Twitter for comment. Musk eliminated the company’s communications team last month.
The mogul has faced sharp criticism over his leadership at Twitter while leading an overhaul that included sweeping layoffs and controversial changes to the social media platform’s verification process. The billionaire also authorized the release of the so-called “Twitter Files” detailing censorship under the company’s past regime.
Musk has indicated for weeks that he intended his stint as Twitter’s top boss to be temporary — telling a court last month that he expected “to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time.”
Aside from running Twitter, Musk heads up electric car maker Tesla, space firm SpaceX, brain chip startup Neuralink and the tunnel-digging Boring Company.
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