X Corp (formerly Twitter)
Leadership History
3 leaders · 2006 to present
Elon Musk is the CEO of X Corp (formerly Twitter), in the role since 2022. The first chief executive was Jack Dorsey, from 2006.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linda Yaccarino | Former CEO | 2023 | 2025 | 2 |
| Elon Musk | Owner; directs X (no separate CEO named) | 2022 | Present | 4 |
| Jack Dorsey | Co-founder and former CEO | 2006 | 2021 | 15 |
X Corp is the company that runs the X platform, formerly Twitter. It belongs to SpaceXAI, the former xAI, which SpaceX acquired in February 2026. SpaceX trades on Nasdaq as SPCX, and Elon Musk controls it through super-voting shares. Twitter's old NYSE ticker, TWTR, was delisted in 2022. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Most of X's revenue comes from advertising: promoted posts, video ads and brand campaigns. It also sells X Premium subscriptions, which bundle verification, fewer ads, creator payouts and Grok access. It charges for API and data access, which it moved to paid tiers in 2023. X Money, its payments product, is a newer line. In SpaceX's filing, the 2025 revenue increase for the AI segment included $365M from X and Grok subscriptions, $88M from data licensing and $116M from advertising.
Former CEO
2023 – 2025
2 years
Yaccarino desperately attempts to reassure massive global advertisers who fled the platform in terror following Musk's highly controversial relaxation of content moderation and absolutely erratic public behavior.
Recruited from NBCUniversal as CEO, she serves as the absolute critical, highly experienced advertising executive tasked with resurrecting X's completely devastated core revenue stream.
Owner; directs X (no separate CEO named)
2022 – Present
4 years (current)
Musk executed an absolutely chaotic, highly aggressive $44 billion hostile takeover, immediately firing 80% of the massive workforce, destroying the iconic 'Twitter' brand, and replacing legacy verification with a paid subscription model.
As the current Owner and CTO, he completely dismantled the old corporate structure, desperately attempting to pivot the massive, deeply unprofitable social network into an 'Everything App' (X) focused on payments and AI.
Co-founder and former CEO
2006 – 2021
15 years
Dorsey orchestrated the highly controversial, absolutely unprecedented decision to permanently ban a sitting US President (Donald Trump) following the January 6th Capitol riots, fundamentally altering the trajectory of global internet censorship.
As Co-Founder and two-time CEO, he was the absolute spiritual anchor of the platform, maintaining its chaotic neutrality until massive external pressure forced aggressive content moderation.
X's main challenges are rebuilding trust with large advertisers, competition for attention from Threads, Bluesky, TikTok and YouTube, and regulatory scrutiny of its content moderation, notably under the EU Digital Services Act. Its ad revenue is still well under half of Twitter's 2021 level. It also sits in a SpaceX segment that lost $6.4B from operations in 2025, mostly because of AI compute spending, so X's results are now judged alongside Grok's costs.
Linda Yaccarino was appointed Chief Executive Officer in May 2023 to run business operations and advertising, while owner Elon Musk directs product development, engineering, and artificial intelligence strategy.
Co-founder Jack Dorsey served as Twitter's founding CEO from 2006 to 2008, was replaced by Evan Williams, and returned as CEO from 2015 to November 2021, famously running both Twitter and Square (Block) simultaneously.
Dick Costolo served as CEO from 2010 to 2015, professionalizing operations, building the company's multi-billion-dollar advertising business, and leading its November 2013 initial public offering.
Parag Agrawal, longtime Chief Technology Officer, succeeded Jack Dorsey as CEO in November 2021, leading the company through the tumultuous buyout battle before being fired by Musk immediately upon closing in October 2022.
Before joining X, Linda Yaccarino spent over a decade as Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, managing $10+ billion in annual ad sales and pioneering unified digital TV ad measurement.
Musk hired Yaccarino to repair relationships with Fortune 500 advertisers, navigate Madison Avenue agencies, and restore commercial credibility while he focused on technical software updates and xAI.
Musk manages X with an intense, hands-on engineering approach, frequently testing product features late at night, soliciting user feedback via public polls, and mandating rapid code deployment.
The firing of top legal, trust and safety, and finance leaders in 2022 fundamentally broke with Twitter's historical institutional culture, transforming X into an agile, highly centralized startup environment.
Compare executive leadership tenures and strategic transitions
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