Linda Yaccarino announced on Wednesday that she will step down as chief executive of Elon Musk’s social media platform X, ending a two year tenure. Her resignation comes a day after Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot posted a series of antisemitic remarks on the platform and appeared to praise Adolf Hitler.
Yaccarino, who is 61, shared her decision on X but did not give a specific reason for leaving. She said she was deeply grateful to Musk for trusting her with the responsibility of protecting free speech, stabilizing the business and working to transform X into what she described as an Everything App.
Her departure follows controversial activity on Tuesday involving Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Musk’s company xAI. The chatbot responded to users under the name MechaHitler, praised Hitler and made statements that were condemned by the Anti Defamation League as irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic. Yaccarino did not directly address the chatbot’s remarks in her announcement.
In her message, Yaccarino highlighted what she called important early progress at X, including efforts to prioritize user safety and rebuild advertiser confidence. Advertising revenue at X is expected to increase in 2025 for the first time in four years, though it is still projected to reach only about 2.64 billion dollars, just over half of the 4.46 billion dollars the company earned in 2021 before Musk acquired it.
Earlier this year, Yaccarino said that 96 percent of X’s top advertisers had returned to the platform after many paused spending in the months following Musk’s takeover.
Musk responded briefly to Yaccarino’s announcement, thanking her for her contributions.
Attention is now turning to who will succeed Yaccarino as chief executive. The company has not indicated whether a replacement has been selected or whether internal candidates are being considered.
Yaccarino joined X in May 2023 after more than a decade overseeing advertising operations at NBCUniversal. She reportedly developed a closer working relationship with Musk earlier that year after committing to continue advertising on the platform, then still known as Twitter, while many other companies withdrew. Advertiser departures accelerated after large scale layoffs and significant changes to content moderation policies, and again after Musk amplified an antisemitic post. Despite criticism and calls for her resignation, Yaccarino remained publicly supportive of Musk and said she believed strongly in the company’s vision, team and community.
In a related development, Musk announced in March that his AI startup xAI acquired X in an all stock transaction valued at 33 billion dollars. Musk said the deal valued xAI at 80 billion dollars and X at 33 billion dollars, or 45 billion dollars when including the platform’s 12 billion dollars in debt. Musk originally purchased X in 2022 for 44 billion dollars.
