MW Chaos continues at Elon Musk's X with departure of CEO Linda Yaccarino

By Lukas I. Alpert

In the nearly three years since Musk acquired Twitter, the social-media platform has endured mass firings; an advertiser exodus; and, of late, antisemitic posts by its AI chatbot, Grok

If there has been an X factor at X under Elon Musk's ownership, it's been chaos.

In just under three years since Musk acquired the social-media platform then known as Twitter, it has seen mass firings of its staff, an advertiser exodus and now the abrupt departure of its chief executive, Linda Yaccarino.

In her turbulent two years in the job, Yaccarino - a former advertising executive at Comcast Corp.'s (CMCSA) NBCUniversal - was tasked with wooing back advertisers spooked by Musk's erratic behavior and loosening of restrictions on what many consider to be hate speech with which they would rather avoid association.

On Wednesday, she announced that she had "decided to step down as CEO of X." She gave no reason for her departure. Representatives for X didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

"When Elon Musk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I'm immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App," Yaccarino wrote.

Yaccarino's tenure at X came during an extremely turbulent period for the company, following Musk's acquisition in late 2022 for $44 billion, which effectively took the company private.

Musk, the world's richest man as CEO of Tesla Inc. $(TSLA)$ and SpaceX, proceeded to fire about three-quarters of the company's employees and disable the platform's speech-moderation filters. Musk angered some of the platform's users by launching a subscription tier that required people to pay to have their profiles verified as authentic.

Musk would frequently fire off late-night missives on X, delving into conspiracy theories and making comments that were deemed by some to be antisemitic, which caused many big advertisers to abandon the platform, causing broad financial disruption for the company, which had been saddled with significant debt as part of Musk's deal to acquire it.

As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approached, Musk - by then a major backer of the Republican former president Donald Trump - turned the platform into an increasingly political megaphone.

X's fortunes received a boost following Trump's victory, with Yaccarino saying major advertisers had returned to the site after the election.

Musk would go on to become a key adviser to Trump in the early days of his administration, being put in charge of "DOGE," as Musk nicknamed the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, which proceeded to lay off large numbers of government employees. Musk and Trump have since had a falling out, with Musk saying over the Fourth of July weekend that he planned to finance a third political party.

Musk has worked to integrate his AI system, Grok, as a chatbot on X, but the system has often attracted bad publicity, for making comments deemed antisemitic - inclusive of praise for Adolf Hitler - and riddled with conspiracy theories.

Earlier this year, Musk said he had sold X to his artificial-intelligence startup, xAI. The all-stock deal valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, Musk said.

Since then, xAI has been in talks to raise new financing that Musk hopes will value it at as high as $120 billion.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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July 09, 2025 12:52 ET (16:52 GMT)

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