Musk Seeks Successor By End Of 2023, After “Stabilizing” Organization

Elon Musk on Wednesday said he aspires to find a successor to take the reins of Twitter by the end of 2023, Bloomberg reports.   

Speaking to the World Government Summit in Dubai via remote video, Musk said he wants to get the Twitter house in order before he steps back from direct, day-to-day leadership of the platform: 

“I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place and the product road map is clearly laid out.

I’m guessing towards the end of this year should be a good timing to find someone else to run the company, because I think it should be in stable condition around the end of this year.”

Musk bought Twitter in a $44 billion deal that closed in October. He told Wednesday’s audience that he did so because he thought it important that Twitter serve as a “maximally trusted…digital public square where people within countries and internationally could communicate with the least amount of censorship.” 

His predecessors were putting too much of a “thumb on the scale” of discourse: 

“Twitter was, I think, doing a little too much to impose a niche, San Francisco-Berkeley ideology on the world.”

In December, Musk committed to honoring the wishes of Twitter users voting on his poll question about his future in the Twitter CEO slot:

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

After 57.5% voted for Musk to step down, he set a loose parameter around the timing of his follow-through: 

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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022

On Wednesday, Musk said “Twitter is still somewhat of a start up in reverse,” and that putting Twitter in a “stable position” was going to take a lot of work. Longer-term, Musk said his five-year vision is for the platform to serve as an “everything app.” 

If you flinched when reading, above, that Musk was addressing a “World Government Summit,” you’re not alone — Musk himself told the group that too much cooperation and coordination is a bad thing: 

“We should be a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government…We want to avoid creating civilizational risk by having…too much cooperation between governments…

We want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that, if something does goes wrong with some part of civilization, the whole thing doesn’t collapse.”

BREAKING: @ElonMusk speaks out against the idea of a “World Government” at the “World Government Summit” and warns it could lead to civilizational collapse. pic.twitter.com/7hBrIY9SMP

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) February 15, 2023

Though Musk’s set an end-of-year timeline for tapping a CEO successor, his Tuesday evening tweets suggested he’d already found one: 

The new CEO of Twitter is amazing pic.twitter.com/yBqWFUDIQH

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2023

He’s great with numbers! pic.twitter.com/auv5M1stUS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2023