Linda Yaccarino Tried to Tame X. Now She’s Out as CEO

Linda Yaccarino, who has served as CEO of X since Elon Musk appointed her to the role in June 2023, announced Wednesday that she is stepping down.

Her departure comes less than four months after Musk announced that X would be absorbed into xAI, the billionaire’s existing artificial intelligence startup. In a post on X, Yaccarino thanked Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

Under her leadership, Yaccarino said that X did “critical early work” to make the platform safe for users, and to “restore advertiser confidence.” She pointed to new features like Community Notes, a system for crowdsourcing fact checks of X posts. “Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai,” Yaccarino wrote.

Yaccarino did not say why she was leaving X or whether she had accepted a role at another company. Her announcement comes hours after Grok—a chatbot developed by xAI that has been integrated directly into X—began making antisemitic remarks in replies to user queries. Grok seemingly began generating the offensive content after Musk claimed on July 4 that the chatbot had been “significantly” improved and that users would “notice a difference” when asking it questions.

X did not immediately respond to a query from WIRED about whether it planned to appoint a new CEO for the social media platform. Musk currently serves as the chief executive of xAI, now the parent organization of X. “Thank you for your contributions,” Musk wrote in a reply to Yaccarino’s departure announcement.

Yaccarino joined X in 2023, less than a year after Musk acquired what was then known as Twitter and assumed the role of CEO. In December of 2022, Musk polled his followers about whether he should step down as Twitter’s chief executive. Days after the poll ended and the majority of users answered yes, Musk said that he would resign once he found a replacement.

The following spring, Musk announced that Yaccarino, then an advertising executive at NBCUniversal, would be taking over as X’s CEO in about six weeks. But even after Musk passed the reins, he remained a central public figure and decision maker at X, as well as the company’s chairman and chief technology officer.

Prior to joining X, Yaccarino was the head of advertising and chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. She was also appointed to a presidential sports, fitness, and nutrition council in 2018 during the first Trump administration.