Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File
- Tesla stock climbed 2% Thursday, jumping late in the day after Elon Musk said he’d step down as Twitter CEO.
- Musk tweeted that he found a new CEO for Twitter who would start in around six weeks.
- “My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”
Tesla stock jumped more than 2% Thursday, seeing a spike near the end of the trading session after Elon Musk announced he would step down from his role as Twitter chief executive.
“Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter,” Musk tweeted at 3:44 p.m. ET. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.”
The stock finished Thursday’s trading session at $172.08, and continued to rise after hours.
Musk has drawn ire from investors in the year since the Twitter takeover saga began, first for selling billions worth of Tesla stock to fund the purchase, and then from shareholders who said that he cannot effectively run Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter simultaneously.
At the end of April, a group of 17 Tesla shareholders that included big pensions and institutions called for the board to rein in Musk, accusing the eccentric billionaire of neglecting his publicly traded EV company.
“Corporate boards can and should intervene if a chief executive appears to be distracted or overly focused on other ventures,” the letter said. “Yet, the Board has permitted Elon Musk to run multiple companies, leading to an inability to address the multiple strategic and competitive issues facing Tesla.”
Last month, investor Dan Nathan, pointed to Musk’s mountain of debt from the Twitter takeover as reason to believe there was pressure being exerted on Tesla and that Musk’s time as the chief executive of three companies was coming to an end.
Musk has slashed costs at the social media platform via mass layoffs over recent months, and supporters like Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood have defended his leadership and business savvy.
Tesla stock is up more than 59% in 2023.
