X CEO Linda Yaccarino says the company is hiring and growing after Musk’s takeover

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is hiring again after slashing more than half of its workforce following its acquisition by Elon Musk.

The company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the company is shifting from cost-cutting to growth mode.

“I get to come in and shift from this cost discipline to growth and what does growth mean? Growth means hiring,” Yaccarino said. She did not specify how many positions the company is looking to fill or what areas they are in.

Yaccarino, who joined X in June after leaving her role as the chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, said the company’s operational run rate is near breaking even. She also said that the company’s relationship with advertisers, which had suffered since Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, was improving and that some of the advertisers that had left were already returning to the platform.

“We’re a company that has gone from 8,000 people and has gone through a very necessary cost-discipline exercise to about 1,500 people so it makes sense that there wouldn’t be some type of impact of presence with these people,” Yaccarino said of the impact of the layoffs on the company’s relationship with advertisers.

Yaccarino also commented on her working relationship with Musk, who owns X through his holding company X Corp. She said that Musk gives her “autonomy” and that their roles are very clear. “Elon is working on accelerating the rebrand and working on the future,” Yaccarino said. “And I’m responsible for the rest. Running the company, from partnerships to legal to sales to finance.”

Musk had surprised many when he announced his plans to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April 2022. He later changed the name of the company to X and said he wanted to transform it into an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat. He also fired several top executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, and cut more than 6,000 jobs. He also clashed with Twitter’s management and moderation policies and said he would reverse bans on suspended users, including former US President Donald Trump.

Yaccarino said that X is focused on its own future and vision, and that it is not worried about competition from other platforms. She said that X offers a unique platform for users to communicate, entertain, transact and create content. She also said that X is using artificial intelligence to automate the production of its content and reduce costs.

X has more than 200 million users worldwide and offers services such as live audio chat rooms, long-form video and articles, subscriptions to creators, video chat calls and payments between users.

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