Elon Musk confirmed he will step down as chief executive officer of Twitter after finding a successor, though he plans to retain control over the company¡¯s engineering teams.

Since taking over in October, Musk has overseen the firings or departures of roughly 5,000 of Twitter¡¯s 7,500 employees. He¡¯s said he plans to emphasize Twitter¡¯s engineering as owner, and it¡¯s hard to tell what¡¯s left of other operations, such as legal and finance, some of which have been gutted.

The billionaire executive embarked on a search for a new CEO, according to a person familiar with the search, after losing a straw poll he posted on the social media site that asked whether he should relinquish his role as head of the company.