Elon Musk Hopes to Have Twitter CEO toward End of Year

On Wednesday, Billionaire Elon Musk said he anticipates finding a CEO for Twitter “probably toward the end of this year."

Speaking via video call to the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk mentioned that making sure the platform works remains the most important thing to him.

“I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financial healthy place,” Musk said when asked about when he'd name a CEO. “I’m guessing probably toward the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.”

Musk, 51, initially made his fortune on the funding site PayPal, then created the spacecraft company SpaceX and invested in the electric car company Tesla. However, in recent months, more attention has been focused on the chaos surrounding his $44 billion purchase of the micro-blogging site Twitter.

“Twitter is still somewhat a startup in reverse,” he said. “There’s work required here to get Twitter to sort of a stable position and to really build the engine of software engineering."

Musk's acquisition of Twitter saw mass launches and other cost-cutting measures. Musk, who is having trouble making nearly $1 billion in annual interest payments for his buyout, has been trying to find a way to maximize profits at the company.

However, some of Musk's decisions run counter to the reasons why journalists, governments, and others rely on Twitter as a platform to share information.

On Wednesday, Musk described the need for users to rely on Twitter for reliable information from verified accounts. However, a confused rollout of a verified account system led to some popular companies being impersonated, drawing more cash required to advertise on the site.