By David S. Cloud
DUBAI -- Elon Musk said the likely time to put in place a new Twitter Inc. CEO could be toward the end of the year.
Last year, Mr. Musk floated the idea of naming someone to take over day-to-day management of the social-media platform that he bought in October in a deal valued at $44 billion.
"I'm guessing probably towards the end of the year," he said Wednesday when asked about a Twitter CEO succession plan as he spoke remotely at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
"I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place and that the product road map is clearly laid out," he said, adding "it should be in a stable position around the end of the year."
Mr. Musk's leadership of Twitter since the acquisition has been tumultuous.
"Twitter is certainly quite the roller coaster," he said at the annual gathering of government officials and business leaders that is sponsored by Dubai's government.
Immediately after taking over the company, Mr. Musk fired Twitter's CEO and other top executives. He then slashed Twitter's staff to roughly 2,000 from nearly 8,000, as part of sweeping cost-cutting efforts.
Mr. Musk has said he expects Twitter to roughly break even this year as he cuts costs, though revenue also has been falling. In November, Mr. Musk had raised the specter of a Twitter bankruptcy amid a sharp drop in digital advertising on the platform.
To help compensate for the ad sales drop, Mr. Musk has been pushing to build up Twitter's subscription revenue. He has introduced a higher-priced subscription service.
He has also overseen changes to other platform features, a new algorithmic-based feed, rebranded with the TikTok-esque name "For You," which recommends content to users that isn't only from accounts they follow.
Mr. Musk said he wants users to have a slightly different experience on Twitter than some say they have on TikTok, the popular short-video app. "I often hear people say, Well, I spent two hours on TikTok, but I regret those two hours," he said.
"We don't want that to be the case with Twitter," he said. "We want to say, like, OK, you spent half an hour on Twitter, but you found it to be useful, entertaining and a good thing in your life."
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk also reiterated the idea that buying Twitter was part of a plan to accelerate the development of something he described as a far-reaching system of digital tools, providing services such as trusted information, secure communications and financial services.
Asked about his busy work schedule, Mr. Musk, who also runs Tesla Inc. and rocket-company SpaceX, said he needs about six hours of sleep and tends to work most of his waking time seven days a week.
"Frankly, I would like to work a bit less than that," he told the Dubai gathering.
He also revived his view that artificial intelligence may require regulation. Mr. Musk, who had a hand in OpenAI, the research lab behind the viral ChatGPT chatbot, before leaving the effort, has for years called for regulation of artificial intelligence citing potential dangers from the technology.
"ChatGPT has illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become," he said.
As AI evolves and becomes more sophisticated it brings with it societal risks, he said.
"I think we should be quite concerned about it, and we should have some regulation of what is fundamentally a risk to the public," he said.
Write to David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 15, 2023 04:49 ET (09:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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