Elon Musk stepping down as CEO of Twitter after 7 months, announces unnamed female successor
Elon Musk is stepping down as CEO of Twitter. He shared the news on the social platform on Thursday May 11, tweeting: "Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!"
Elon will "transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops". He purchased the website in October 2022 and invited back users who had previously been suspended, including former President Donald Trump.
Many celebrities left the site when he removed the blue checkmark, which confirmed a user was verified, and allowed anyone to purchase the tick for $8 a month.
The news comes after he previously claimed he would step down when he found someone “foolish enough to take the job", after promising to abide by the result of a Twitter poll in which he asked users if he should step down. More than 57% voted “yes," he should step down.
The billionaire frequently makes headlines, and is also the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, and CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.
He has ten children from three different romances; Elon's first wife was Justine and the pair married in 2000. The couple welcomed their first son, Nevada Alexander Musk in 2002, however he tragically died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at ten weeks old.
Justine and Elon went on to have twins, Griffin and Vivien, in 2004 before welcoming triplets, Kai, Saxon and Damian, two years later. But the marriage wasn't to last and the husband and wife parted ways in 2008.
Elon's next high-profile relationship was with actress Talulah Riley. The star is known for her roles in titles such as Pride & Prejudice, Inception and St Trinian's. Talulah and Elon married in 2010 but two years later Elon called off their marriage and filed for divorce.
However, a year later, the pair remarried and announced they were officially back together. But, by the end of 2014, Elon had filed for divorce again and by 2016, the marriage was over.
In late 2016, Aquaman actress Amber Heard began dating Elon shortly after her high-profile divorce from Johnny Depp. Amber only dated Elon for a year, and the couple parted ways due to busy careers getting in the way.
More recently, Elon has been involved with singer-songwriter Grimes.
The couple began dating in 2018 and were together for three years before they parted ways in 2021.
MORE: Amber Heard's baby daughter Oonagh is growing up – look how she's changed
In May 2020, they welcomed their first child together, who they named X Æ A-12, but they later changed their son's name X Æ A-XII in order to comply with California law; California law does not allow legal names to include numbers or symbols.
In March 2022, Grimes revealed she had welcomed a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, but told fans later in the year her daughter was now known as 'Y'.
"She's Y now, or 'Why' or '?' (But the government won't recognize that). curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such," she tweeted.
READ: These are the top names for babies born during lockdown
In July 2022 it emerged that he had become a father for the ninth and tenth time in October 2021 after Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink,. had welcomed twins.
Neuralink executive Shivon and Elon's twins were born in Austin, Texas, one month before Elon and former partner Grimes welcomed a daughter via surrogacy in December 2021.
"Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far," he wrote on the social media site.
Like this story? Sign up to our What to Watch newsletter to get other stories like this delivered straight to your inbox.
