Twitter users voted in a poll to have Elon Musk step down as chief executive of the social media platform, in a backlash against the billionaire less than two months after he took office.
Some 57.5% of the votes were in favor of “Yes,” while 42.5% opposed the idea of Musk giving up Twitter, according to the poll the billionaire released Sunday morning. evening. More than 17.5 million people participated in the vote.
Musk said Sunday that he will comply with the poll results, but did not elaborate on when he would resign if the results indicated he should.
Should I resign as head of Twitter? I will stick to the results of this survey.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Shares of Tesla Inc, the electric car maker headed by Musk, were up about 5% in premarket trading.
Musk, who lost his title as the world’s richest person earlier this month, also founded the tunneling company Boring Company, backs medical device company Neuralink and runs rocket company SpaceX.
Tesla investors have been concerned that Musk has been spreading himself too thin in the wake of the Twitter deal.
Tesla shares have already lost nearly 60% of their value this year as, like other automakers, it battles supply chain woes and growing competition in the EV space.
“It looks like Musk’s reign as CEO of Twitter will be coming to an end and therefore a big positive for Tesla stock, slowly starting to remove this drag from the story,” Wedbush analyst Dan said. Ives, in a note.
“Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk.”
Tesla is among the world’s leading automakers, delivering approximately one million cars each year. But recent logistical challenges, pandemic-related lockdowns in China, higher borrowing costs and a bleak outlook for global economic growth have raised concerns.
Musk last month told a Delaware court that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company.
Responding to a Twitter user’s comment about a possible CEO change, Musk said Sunday that “there is no successor.”
“Elon,” “Twitter CEO,” “vote Yes” and “vote No” were among the trending topics on Twitter on Monday.
The survey comes after Twitter’s Sunday policy update, which banned accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social media companies and content containing links or usernames for rival platforms.
