Twitter’s billionaire owner Elon Musk has confirmed plans to step down as boss of the social media platform following a poll in which users overwhelmingly voted to oust the chief executive.

On Tuesday, Musk posted: "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

Musk will still oversee some key divisions on Twitter once he finds a replacement, but will no longer be the sole face of the platform making key decisions in regards to policy and technological changes.

The CEO posted a poll on Sunday asking users whether he should step down, confirming that he would “abide by the results”. Of around 17.5 million votes, 57.5% said ‘Yes’.

The poll was posted shortly after Musk was pictured at the World Cup final in Qatar with Jared Kushner – the son-in-law of Donald Trump who has recently reportedly received $2 billion in funding from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Twitter’s second-largest shareholder is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, with some Twitter users and journalists speculating that the state may want a less divisive face at the front of the social media site.

Amid the ongoing chaos at Twitter – which has seen it haemorrhage both users and support from advertisers – the other business where Musk is CEO, electric auto maker Tesla, has seen its share price nosedive. Since it became apparent that Musk would have to go through with his $44 billion takeover of Twitter (after he initially tried to cancel the deal), Tesla’s share price has shrunk from over $300 in late September to under $140 in late December.

This has led many investors and Wall Street in general to question whether Musk has been too distracted to steer Tesla through a key moment in its history when European brands like BMW and Audi are increasingly entering into the luxury EV market it had previously cornered.

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