Elon Musk said he will step down as the head of Twitter once he finds someone “foolish enough” to take over the reins.
The billionaire said while he will step down as chief executive, he will still run some key divisions of the social media platform he purchased just a couple of short months ago.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter in October has been marred by utter chaos and controversy.
This is the first time Musk has mentioned stepping down as chief of the social media platform after Twitter users voted for him to resign in a poll.
On Sunday night, Musk posted a poll asking users whether he should step down, promising to adhere to the results. After the 24 hours period of the poll, 57.5 percent of around 17.5 million people said “yes.”
Musk then went dark on social media, only chiming in a day later to say future polls would only be for Twitter Blue paid subscribers.
The poll results capped a chaotic week that included changes to Twitter’s privacy policy and the suspension – and reinstatement – of journalists’ accounts that drew condemnation from news organizations, advocacy groups, and officials.
Wall Street calls for Musk to step down had been growing for weeks and recently even Tesla bulls have questioned his focus on the social media platform and how it might distract him from running the EV maker.
Musk is also the chief executive of the car company, Tesla. Tesla Inc’s shares crashed since Musk began flirting with taking over Twitter, having lost about 60 percent of their value since Musk made the offer for Twitter back in April. The shares rose about 1 percent on Wednesday after he said he would step down at Twitter.
Many investors have been questioning whether he is too distracted to also properly run his electric-vehicle automaker Tesla, in which he is personally involved in production and engineering.
Musk has himself said he had too much on his plate, and that he would look for a Twitter CEO.
There has been no timeline released for when Musk will leave Twitter, saying only that there was currently no successor and that “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.”
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