Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive of social media site X, said Wednesday that she’s stepping down from her role after two years at the company.
“When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company,” she said in a post on X.
The resignation comes as X is trying to woo more advertisers and is pushing forward with its efforts to build artificial intelligence-powered tools. Earlier this year, xAI, the company behind chatbot Grok, acquired X in a deal that valued the social network at $33 billion.
This week, Grok posted several antisemitic remarks on X, which could make some users and advertisers wary about using the platform.
The X account for Grok posted that the company was “actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.” X has rules against posting hate speech on its platforms. The social media company, which was headquartered in San Francisco but moved last year to Texas, and xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yaccarino, a former executive at NBC Universal, joined X after Musk took control of the social media platform, previously known as Twitter. She led X through a tumultuous period when some advertisers abandoned the platform because of concerns that their ads would show up next to offensive content.
Yaccarino, 61, didn’t say why she was leaving X but emphasized that her role involved helping to turn the company around.
“We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users — especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence,” she said on X.
Musk’s outspoken nature posed challenges for the social network’s advertising business. Major brands including Apple, Disney and Warner Bros Discovery paused their advertising campaigns on the platform in 2023 after Musk backed an antisemitic post on the social network.
Tensions escalated after Musk told advertisers they could “f— yourself” at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York, remarks that Yaccarino addressed.
Jasmine Enberg, vice president and a principal analyst at eMarketer, said in a statement that Yaccarino took on a tough job and lasted longer than expected.
“Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires,” she said.
Market research company eMarketer projects that X will see ad revenue growth for the first time in four years in 2025. The company is expected to generate $2.26 billion in ad revenue, but will still earn about half of what it did in 2021, the research company said.
The social media platform went through several leadership changes after Musk bought the company in 2022 for $44 billion. He slashed roughly 80% of the staff and fired Parag Agrawal, who was the chief executive of Twitter at the time. Musk, who already runs multiple companies including Tesla and SpaceX, served as chief executive of the social network before handing over the reins to Yaccarino.
Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, said he was surprised that Yaccarino didn’t resign sooner.
“The reality is that Elon Musk is and always has been at the helm of X. And that made Linda X’s CEO in title only, which is a very tough position to be in, especially for someone of Linda’s talents,” he said.
Yaccarino worked with advertisers for many years before she became the chief executive of X.
She was the chairwoman for global advertising and partnerships at NBC Universal, where she served in various roles for more than a decade. There, her team generated more than $100 billion in ad sales, according to a bio that was previously on NBC Universal.
She also helped launch the company’s streaming service, Peacock, and pushed the company to modernize its approach to serving advertising clients as the media landscape rapidly shifted from traditional TV to digital platforms.
She put a greater emphasis on using data and technology for ad-buying but continued to maintain personal relationships that have long been at the core of the TV sales business. Yaccarino, a rare media sales executive who developed a celebrity-like persona, enjoyed performing onstage at NBCU’s annual advertiser upfront presentation at Radio City Music Hall.
Raised in what she called a “very traditional Italian Catholic family,” Yaccarino is known to have conservative political leanings and has ruminated about pursuing elected office.
During President Trump’s first term, he named Yaccarino to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.
Prior to joining NBC Universal, Yaccarino worked at Turner Broadcasting for nearly two decades and held executive roles that also focused on advertising sales, according to her LinkedIn profile.