Linda Yaccarino Tried to Tame X. Now She’s Out as CEO

7 months ago 94

Linda Yaccarino, who has served as CEO of X since Elon Musk appointed her to the role in June 2023, announced Wednesday that she is stepping down.

Her departure comes less than four months after Musk announced that X would be absorbed into xAI, the billionaire’s existing artificial intelligence startup. In a post on X, Yaccarino thanked Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

Under her leadership, Yaccarino said that X did “critical early work” to make the platform safe for users, and to “restore advertiser confidence.” She pointed to new features like Community Notes, a system for crowdsourcing fact checks of X posts. “Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai,” Yaccarino wrote.

Yaccarino did not say why she was leaving X or whether she had accepted a role at another company. Her announcement comes hours after Grok—a chatbot developed by xAI that has been integrated directly into X—began making antisemitic remarks in replies to user queries. Grok seemingly began generating the offensive content after Musk claimed on July 4 that the chatbot had been “significantly” improved and that users would “notice a difference” when asking it questions.

X did not immediately respond to a query from WIRED about whether it planned to appoint a new CEO for the social media platform. Musk currently serves as the chief executive of xAI, now the parent organization of X. “Thank you for your contributions,” Musk

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