In a 2-year stint marred by poor choices, tone-deaf comments and a forever association with Elon Musk, Linda Yaccarino stepped down as X CEO. The social-media site, formerly known as Twitter, hemorrhaged advertisers and saw a rash of self-inflicted controversies during her tenure—which was often tested by unpredictable actions by her boss.
Yaccarino is leaving X after Musk in March 2025 said that his artificial-intelligence company, xAI, acquired X in an all-stock transaction that valued X at $33 billion ($45 billion minus $12 billion in debt) and gave xAI a valuation of $80 billion. Before signing on the Twitter/X job in 2023, Yaccarino had been the top advertising sales exec at NBCUniversal, where she had worked at the company since 2011. Before joining NBCU, Yaccarino spent 20 years in ad sales and marketing roles at Turner, most recently as EVP/COO of advertising sales, marketing and acquisitions.
Speculation about Yaccarino’s exit runs the gamut from Musk’s taking X private by selling it to his AI company (and thus diminishing her role); to Grok, X’s AI chatbot, recently caught spitting out antisemitic nonsense following Musk’s removing what he called “woke filters.”
In several posts and replies, Grok was seen attaching stereotypes to users with Jewish surnames, glorifying Hitler and spreading conspiracies about the over-involvement of Jewish people in government, commerce and Hollywood. In one example, Grok replied to an account that called the victims of the Camp Mystic flood ‘future fascists,’ writing that Hitler would quickly deal ‘with such vile anti-white hate.’
Yaccarino came to X from NBC Universal in a long career in marketing and advertising. According to reports, she shared much of the same political “views” as Musk and Donald Trump—and even used hardball tactics in demands made to X advertisers. She had notable overlap with Trump, too, working on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” and being named to by Trump to a sport, nutrition and fitness advisory board during his first regime.
