San Francisco. Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X after two turbulent years running Elon Musk’s social media platform.

Yaccarino announced her resignation Wednesday in a positive post on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying “the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter” alongside Musk’s AI company, xAI, the maker of the chatbot Grok. She did not provide a reason for her departure.

Musk responded to her announcement with a brief statement on X: “Thank you for your contributions.”

“The only thing surprising about Linda Yaccarino’s resignation is that it didn’t come sooner,” said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester. “It was clear from the start that she was being set up to fail with a limited scope as CEO, while Musk remained firmly in control.”

Musk hired Yaccarino, a veteran advertising executive, in May 2023 after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and slashing its workforce. At the time, Musk said she would oversee business operations while he focused on product design and technology. Before her hiring, Musk warned that whoever took the CEO job “must like pain a lot.”

Yaccarino took on the difficult task of trying to win back major advertisers after months of turmoil following Musk’s takeover, while also operating under Musk’s highly public presence and his moves to loosen content moderation in the name of free speech.

“Being CEO of X was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted longer than many expected,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Emarketer. “Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped back and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, she had to run the business while regularly putting out fires.”

Yaccarino’s position became uncertain earlier this year when Musk merged X with his AI company, xAI, and advertising issues persisted. Since Musk’s takeover, many companies have cut ad spending, the platform’s primary revenue stream, due to concerns that weakened content moderation has allowed hate speech to spread.

This week, Grok generated a wave of antisemitic comments, including praise for Adolf Hitler. “We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” the chatbot’s account posted on X early Wednesday.

Experts have linked Grok’s behavior to Musk’s push to position it as an alternative to what he sees as overly “woke” chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Last month, Musk encouraged X users to submit “politically incorrect” facts to train Grok, prompting an influx of racist and conspiratorial responses. A directive telling Grok to avoid shying away from “politically incorrect” claims was later removed.

“To me, this has all the fingerprints of Elon’s involvement,” said Talia Ringer, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Yaccarino has not publicly addressed the recent controversy. She has previously defended Musk’s approach, including in a lawsuit against Media Matters for America over a report alleging that top advertisers’ posts on X appeared next to extremist content. The report prompted some advertisers to pause spending on the platform.

A federal judge last year dismissed X’s lawsuit against another nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which reported a rise in hate speech on X under Musk’s ownership.

X is also entangled in legal disputes with major advertisers, including CVS, Mars, Lego, Nestle, Shell, and Tyson Foods over what it claims was an “advertiser boycott” that deprived the company of billions in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

Despite the challenges, Enberg noted that Yaccarino “accomplished what she was hired to do to a degree.” Emarketer projects X’s ad business will return to growth in 2025 after its revenue was cut by more than half between 2022 and 2023 following Musk’s takeover.

However, Enberg added, “the reasons for X’s ad recovery are complicated, and Yaccarino was unable to fully restore the platform’s reputation among advertisers.”

Analysts say some advertisers may have returned to X to avoid alienating Trump supporters during Musk’s alignment with the former president’s base, while legal threats from X or federal regulators may have also influenced their decisions. The FTC is investigating Media Matters over its reporting on hate speech on X, which Media Matters says has led to advertiser exits. In response, Media Matters has sued the FTC, claiming retaliation against protected speech.

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