Linda Yaccarino to step down as CEO of Elon Musk’s social media site X

Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive of social media site X, said Wednesday that she’s stepping down from her role after two years at the company.

“When @elonmusk 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,” she said in a post on X.

The resignation comes as X is trying to woo more advertisers and is pushing forward with its efforts to build artificial intelligence-powered tools. Earlier this year, xAI, the company behind chatbot Grok, acquired X in a deal that valued the social network at $33 billion.

This week, Grok posted several antisemitic remarks on X, which could make some users and advertisers wary about using the platform.

The X account for Grok posted that the company was “actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.” X has rules against posting hate speech on its platforms.

Yaccarino, a former executive at NBCUniversal, joined X after Musk took control of the social media platform, previously known as Twitter. She led X through a tumultuous period when some advertisers abandoned the platform because of concerns that their ads would show up next to offensive content.

Yaccarino, 61, didn’t say why she was leaving X but emphasized that her role involved helping to turn the company around.

“We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users — especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence,” she said on X.

Market research company eMarketer projects that X will see ad revenue growth for the first time in four years in 2025. The company is expected to generate $2.26 billion in ad revenue, but will still earn about half of what it did in 2021, the research company said.

Musk purchased the social network for $44 billion in 2022.