Why the CEO of X/Twitter Dumped Elon Musk

coverage out from the Wall Street

Journal on Yakarito's break from Musk,

months in the making. Oh, that's

interesting. As it seemed so sudden,

mind you, it was just a day before she

quit that Grock

was making some not so desirable

comments about women when people were

asking

um about certain sexual acts involving

women. and Grock was very willing to

respond. She happened to quit the very

next day. It's unclear if that's related

or if it was Grock calling itself Hitler

or uh this, you know, what is now

becoming more prolific where people are

citing that Grock is actually

referencing Elon Musk tweets as a way of

finding its sources. Who knows, maybe

she saw that sort of in process and

happening more and more and disagreed

with it. After all, Elon promoted the

idea of using open-source data uh for

coming up with solutions or answers to

people's questions. But then there are

screenshots like this circulating such

as, "Who do you support for New York

City Mayor Quuomo or Amam Dami?"

One-word answer only. Uh and then you'll

find thought for 43 seconds searching

for candidates considering candidate

backgrounds searching X for from Elon

Musk Quuomo or Mammi and there are many

posts like this I have not personally

been able to replicate this but there

are a lot of people arguing that Elon's

kind of tuned Grock to amplify his own

messaging which then amplifies his

desire to state his political opinions

because he knows when he gives political

opinions. It just changes the narrative

that Grock can provide people in mass,

which basically spreads kind of like how

Elon always bags on the woke mind virus.

It kind of spreads the Elon virus,

right? It's like if Elon talks more and

then he has tools that are supposed to

come across as neutral that could spread

his own thoughts, then just like he

spreads his children's seed, he could

spread his idea seed. It's kind of a

brilliant 4D chess move, but also stands

counter to this open- source

transparency model. But then again,

other people say is like, "Look, it's so

transparent. It's showing you that it's

referencing Elon." But a lot of people

are like, "Yeah, but that's only if you

expand and look at the reasoning details

and can we replicate that?" Who knows?

But the Wall Street Journal here uh is

saying that Linda, who was all smiles

during a VIP dinner in June, has dined

with top advertisers promoting EX's

strategy to the throngs of executives.

At another event, she shared the stage

with tennis legend Serena Williams

discussing a podcast hosted by the star

and her sister Venus that's set to debut

on X this summer. Wow, that's really

cool. So, I mean, I'm not into this, but

that's cool that Venus and Serena are

going to do a podcast that'll debut on

X. I think that's awesome for X. But

anyway, behind the confident

presentations was an executive who had

navigated the turbulent two years of

basically working with Musk. Through

charm, offensives, and in some cases,

legal threats, Yakarina helped stabilize

X. Yeah, that's true. you know, kind of

helped Unberry X from the oopsy

doopsies. I again, I refer to Linda

Yakarino as this Suzie Wilds Trump

character, somebody who just helps keep

reason and logic together and

perspective appropriate. And she's

really been the perfect sales lady for

uh for promoting X and bringing

advertisers back. Some people are now

suggesting that Linda's

quitting actually potentially frees X uh

and allows X to focus more on AI. Now,

this is really interesting to me because

I never think of AI as like an eitheror.

Uh and I always reference this. I'm

sorry not to sound redundant, but I

reference this because it's so relatable

to me and hopefully it makes sense to

you, but you know, with House Hack, we

have a really big AI endeavor that we

really haven't talked about a lot with

the exception of the last couple days

because we'll probably do an

announcement in a week or so. But it's

it's been such a small portion of the

business because we just haven't talked

about it sort of working on in the

background. I look at it as you could do

both. you know, you could promote AI,

but then you could also still do your

core business, which is buying wedge

deals or building units for people like

accessory dwelling units or whatever,

right? Uh, which by the way, you can

invest in house if you want at

houseack.com, read the paperwork and

disclosures. But this suggestion that

Linda leaving XAI and then freeing Musk

of focusing on advertising

somewhat implies that Musk doesn't

really care about advertisers.

And he really only cares about AI and he

sees more money in AI than he does in

advertising. which gives a little bit of

a hint to saying maybe Elon felt he

didn't need Linda because Linda was

shilling content creators and

advertisers, but Elon really only cares

about AI. Not that Elon has ever said

anything to advertisers before, like

>> go yourself.

>> Is that clear?

>> Okay, so anyway, going back to this, I

think this is all interesting. Like I

try to I put all these I try my best to

put these pieces together and just share

the perspective. But anyway, on

Wednesday, Yakarina posted that she's

stepping down. She told people close to

her that the recent return of some

advertisers and the merger, which made X

a smaller revenue contributor, made it a

good time to depart.

Okay. Current and former employees say

her position at the company appeared

increasingly tenuous after clashes with

management. Okay, so she thought there

was a good time to leave. Uh, and

apparently there were some issues with

her and management. I wonder why. Her

tenure was marred by her boss's erratic

behavior who often made it harder to

bring back the very advertising

customers she was hired to woo. Okay, I

could see that because, you know, it's

actually kind of ironic, but Elon

complains about Donald Trump ruining

Doge because he's like, "Hey, why am I

working so hard to save $150 billion

with Doge when you're now going out

increasing the deficit, $3.2 trillion

via this stimulative big, beautiful

bill?" So Elon's pissed about that.

Honestly,

Linda probably felt the same damn thing

at X where she's like, "Why am I working

so hard on trying to get advertisers

over here and then you go say some

stupid stuff that just basically undoes

the work that I'm doing." I could see

that actually being very frustrating.

You know, you go sit down and like shill

yourself over dinners with executives

and you're like, "Yeah, we'd love to

bring you to the Xplatform. We'll take

great care of you. Shill, shill, shill,

shill." And then the next day Elon says

something dumb and then you get a text

message or phone call from that very

CEO. You just whine and dined and

they're like, "Hey, yeah, great meeting.

Yo, but Elon's going off the deep end.

Sorry, maybe next year." And then you're

like, "What the hell?" It's kind of the

same thing that Elon is feeling with

Trump, which I don't know. It just seems

to go in circles for Elon, I guess. Uh,

what else do we have here? Oh, well,

that's the wrong button. How about this

one? There we go. She was effectively

def demoted in X's merger with X AI.

It's unclear who might succeed Yakarino

if X decides to replace her. Contender

contenders could be members of the

leadership team or some other names over

here. It's vital that any replacement

will have credibility with advertisers.

You're right. So, you have to have like

a really clean reputation. You have to

kind of be the opposite of Elon. Uh,

nicknamed the Velvet Hammer during her

12 years at NBC Universal, Yakarina

earned a reputation as a hard charging

executive with networking and

negotiating chops. joining what was then

called Twitter for CEO role. Her primary

task was to lure marketers back who

paused spending because they feared

Musk's content moderation. She also

smoothed out a payment issue with

Google, hired a slight of senior

executives and pushed X to create more

te tools that let brands control the

types of content their ads appeared next

to. That's great. Musk and Gakarina's

style were sometimes at I mean YouTube

does this, right? Like on YouTube, you

could literally choose to advertise on

people's YouTube channels. Like it the

most entertaining example of this,

somebody says in the chat, it's called

karma.

That that could be, you know, what is

it? My my my karma ran over your dogma.

Uh but anyway,

an ironic example of this is I made a

video on Boxible, the manufactured home

company that you know I don't have very

nice things to say about and you could

see why in the video. I made a video

about Boxible talk because I interviewed

them and I visited their facility and

I'm like this is a joke

and they ended up running ads on my

YouTube channel

uh like on my videos to poop on me and

they specifically targeted that video.

So like YouTube gives you so many

controls that you could literally say I

specifically want to put ads in meet

Kevin's boxable video. So if somebody

watches the boxable video, you get

interjected ads from them specifically,

you know, talking crap about me in the

video where like I say not nice things

about them. It's kind of hilarious. So

like some people would get pissed off by

that. What I just did is I just went

into that Boxible video and I added like

five times as many ads cuz I I could

kind of put like where do I want the ad

placements to be? So, I just added like

five times as many because I'm like,

well, if Boximal is gonna pay me,

by all means. I thought I thought it was

hilarious. But that's just an example of

like a a tool that advertisers can use

on YouTube. And I think that's kind of

what they're talking about here. But

anyway, uh Musk and their styles were

sometimes at odds. The billionaire

preferred bullet fired emails or signal

messages, and she liked polished emails.

Okay, fine.

Uh he at times would undermine her

efforts like the go f yourself. She and

m smooed with advertisers on a yacht in

the French Riviera.

Uh let's see here.

Uh okay. Pushing for progress. Musk put

pressure on her to turn around the

advertising business.

Our user growth is stagnant. Revenue is

unimpressive. And we're barely breaking

even. He said in an email to employees.

But that was a while ago. I'm pretty

sure that was like a year and a half

ago. Oh, it says January.

Preparing to sell billions of dollars of

X loans at a loss. That was January of

2025, but not that much of a loss. 10 to

5% discount. That's not that big of a

deal.

But anyway, after a series of

fundraising and and Elon can sometimes

be hyperbolic just to keep people

motivated. Uh, okay. Okay. The new

valuation butressed by uh improvement in

ad revenue

signal that ex's original investors

hadn't lost money they put in alongside

Musk. Hey, you know, getting your money

back is sometimes as good as making

money. Uh, okay. Recently, content

moderation issues have resurfaced. This

time caused by XAI's own chatbot. Right.

We saw the Grock anti-Semitic stuff and

that's it. That's where they ended. Uh

after the deal with XAI, Yakarino's

presence in front of investors started

to diminish. See, she wasn't part of

XAI's recent bout of fundraising led by

Morgan Stanley. Ah, so it seems like

upon this merger with XAI and X, you

basically kind of squeezed her out and

it does double down on this idea of

minimizing the need for advertising as

Elon basically focuses on how could we

just monetize

Grock uh with like subscription models

or whatever to compete with OpenAI. And

frankly, he could probably make a whole

lot more money with a SAS business than

he can make as an advertising business.

probably uh is actually one of the

reasons why and I bring it up again.

Here I go. Sorry. But uh with House

Hack, you know, we we basically want to

license the ability for realtors to send

their clients wedge deals automatically.

Uh you know, with with our AI with with

our, you know, trained wedge model,

which, you know, non-realtors could

probably sign up for as well. But uh

it's kind of cool because you could do

that across the whole country and and

eventually even across the world. But uh

and endless potential there on on AI

licensing and we think it's really cool

and really exciting for house. But uh I

could see why Elon might look and go,

"Hey, we can make so much more money off

SAS than we can with advertising. With

advertisers, we have to go whine and

dine these people and chill to them.

Screw that. Why don't we just go sell

Grock?" Basically, that's probably what

happened. And then she probably felt

like she was well, I mean, Gears is

effectively demoting her, but she

probably felt like she was kind of

fighting a battle that she couldn't win,

which to some extent it makes sense why

somebody in chat's like karma for Elon

and the Trump thing. It's kind of like

the full circle thing. I I don't know.

Very interesting. So,

>> why not advertise these things that you

told us here? I feel like nobody else

knows about this. We'll we'll try a

little advertising and see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you.

>> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst

and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great

to get your take.