Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said he will soon be replaced in his role as the CEO of the social media company, shifting his focus on his electric vehicle company Tesla.
Musk is making organizational changes that he believes will transform the social media platform. Since he completed the company’s acquisition late last month, the world richest man has sacked more than half of Twitter’s 7,000 workforce, raising questions about the sustainability of the country.
But Musk said on Wednesday he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company. He added that he hoped to complete an organizational restructuring this week.
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Musk made the remarks while testifying in a Delaware court to defend against claims that his $56 billion pay package at Tesla was based on easy to achieve performance targets and was approved by a compliant board of directors, per Reuters.
Twitter has been greeted with a lot of controversies following the changes introduced to the company by Musk. The changes, which include the controversial introduction of the $8 verification check, have questioned Musk’s ability to run the company.
But Musk said in a tweet that he will continue to run Twitter until it is in a strong place, though it will “take some time.” His tweet came after former CEO Jack Dorsey said that he will not accept the role of Twitter CEO, in a response to a Twitter user who asked if he would take the position of CEO.
Musk earlier admitted that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months but promised that “we will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
Musk is spending a lot of time on Twitter trying to implement the changes that will make the platform what he wants it to be. Earlier this week, he sent a late-night internal email to Twitter employees, demanding that they sign up to “extremely hardcore” work, which will keep them at the office most of the time, or walk away with their three months’ severance package.
“Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore,” Musk wrote in the memo. “This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
However, his commitment to Twitter’s success is increasingly becoming a challenge to Tesla and the electric vehicle’s investors are getting worried that it will affect the growth of the company.
Tesla has been a big victim of Musk’s Twitter adventure. The leading EV company lost more than $400 billion following the controversy that rocked Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter. He said he will cut his time at the social media company as soon as the initial workload reduces.
“There’s an initial burst of activity needed post-acquisition to reorganize the company,” Musk said in his testimony. “But then I expect to reduce my time at Twitter.”