Elon Musk hires new FEMALE CEO for Twitter

Billionaire Elon Musk has announced he will step down as Twitter CEO, with a new female boss taking the reigns of the social media platform.

The Twitter chief has said he has hired a woman to take over him as the network's chief executive officer but has not yet revealed her identity.

Elon, who bought Twitter in October 2022, announced the news in a tweet and said the new leader will take over within about six weeks.

He said: "Excited to announce that I’ve a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!

"My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops."

His post, uploaded at 8:48pm BST, attracted thousands of retweets and likes within minutes, and Twitter's shares jumped more than 2 per cent immediately after the announcement.

The move comes amid spiking controversy over the leadership and the future of the highly influential platform.

Musk has been Twitter's owner and CEO for seven months, after acquiring the social media company for $44 billion.

During his reign, he has carried out massive layoffs as part of cost-cutting efforts.