Elon Musk Loses Another Top Executive As X's Ad Chief Reportedly Quits - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet

John Nitti, who served as global head of revenue operations and advertising innovation at X, has left the social media company after just 10 months in the role, according to a report by the Financial Times on Friday.

Top Contender For CEO After Yaccarino Exit

Nitti’s departure comes after Linda Yaccarino resigned in July following two years as chief executive. Since then, Nitti and Angela Zepeda, the global head of marketing, have taken turns handling her responsibilities.

X did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment.

Multiple Senior Exits Continue

The departure comes as the Elon Musk-led firm faces a continuing wave of senior exits across the company, which was taken over by his artificial intelligence startup xAI in March.

Mike Liberatore, xAI's chief financial officer, resigned over the summer after three months on the job, followed shortly by general counsel Robert Keele, who cited family commitments.

After less than a year, Mahmoud Reza Banki, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at X, announced his departure in early October.

Earlier this month, Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) banker who advised on Musk's $44 billion acquisition of X, was named CFO of xAI.

Advertising Revenue Pressures

Musk, the visionary entrepreneur, has long pressed X’s advertising executives to increase profits as he invests billions of dollars in chips and infrastructure to create superhuman AI to rival OpenAI and Google‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) DeepMind.

Musk’s decision to loosen content moderation guidelines and his advice to marketers who didn’t agree with his strategy to “go f***” themselves have turned off advertisers.

After X sued companies like Shell (NYSE:SHEL) and Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) for allegedly engaging in a “illegal boycott” of the platform—a claim they refute—some advertisers privately expressed that they felt under pressure to spend money on the platform.

Musk’s involvement in Donald Trump‘s administration, which ended over the summer, diverted his attention during the first half of the year.

According to two sources cited by the Financial Times, he has since begun making decisions about advertising on his own without seeking input from leadership. One such decision was to prohibit hashtags from being used in advertisements on X, the report said.

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