The new CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, told CNBC that her role at the social media company has “autonomy” from owner Elon Musk.
Linda Yaccarino was interviewed for the first time since joining X as CEO on Thursday, in which she detailed the differences between her role as CEO and Musk’s ownership of the platform.
“Mine and Elon’s roles are very clear,” Yaccarino said. “Elon focuses on product design. He leads a team of extraordinary engineers, and focuses on new technology.”
“Elon is working on accelerating the rebrand and working on the future,” she continued. “I’m responsible for the rest running the company, from partnerships to legal to sales to finance,”
Yaccarino claimed to have “autonomy,” in her role at X, saying that her and Elon’s jobs do not overlap.
“It’s been eight incredibly supportive weeks,” the former NBCUniversal advertising head noted.
Yaccarino continued that although their roles are separate, she and Musk are “brought together by the belief in what we’re trying to achieve,” with X.
“Our joint belief, in free expression, and the importance of that being a foundational core value of the company,” she said.
The X CEO compared her partnership with Musk to a “relay race,” in which Musk “works on the technology and dreams of what’s next.” Yaccarino, on the other hand, brings new features “to market for economic prosperity.”
Yaccarino also claimed that “by all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago.”
Just last week, X Corp. sued he hate-speech-tracking nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate over claims their published research was an intentional move to further damage the platform’s advertising business.
