This information was confirmed by the Financial Times, marking another link in the chain of senior leaders leaving X since Musk took over the social networking platform.

John Nitti, one of the veterans of the American media and advertising industry, has officially left X Corp – the company owned by Elon Musk – after less than a year of working there. This information was confirmed by the Financial Times, marking another link in the chain of senior leaders who have left X since Musk took over this social networking platform.

Before joining X, Nitti was Verizon’s chief advertising officer, with nearly two decades of experience working with major brands like Omnicom and Zenith Media. When Elon Musk appointed him in early 2025, observers believed it was a major effort to rebuild trust with advertisers – a group of customers who had abandoned the platform in droves due to concerns about brand safety and uncertainty about content policies. Nitti was seen as the person capable of returning X to where Twitter once was: a platform attractive to marketers and global brands.

However, in less than ten months, Nitti decided to leave. According to the Financial Times, the reason stemmed from growing disagreements with Elon Musk over how the advertising division was run. Musk was said to be too involved in the strategies that Nitti and his team wanted to implement – ​​from tightening content moderation to limiting ad formats.

Several inside sources revealed that Nitti had proposed a “Brand Safety Rebuild” campaign to lure corporations like Disney and Coca-Cola back to the platform, but the initiative was rejected by Musk because it “did not fit with the spirit of free speech” he advocated. Tensions were high when Musk repeatedly demanded that the advertising team “double down” while cutting staff and budgets.

John Nitti’s departure comes just months after Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X Corp, quietly left the company. The pair were once seen as a team that could help Musk restore trust in the advertising industry, but ultimately failed to work long-term in an environment described as “highly volatile and lacking in autonomy.”

Reuters commented that Nitti’s departure is “the next blow to X’s ambition to re-establish itself as a leading advertising platform”, in the context of the company’s advertising revenue has seriously declined.

For Nitti, leaving X may be a natural choice for an executive accustomed to working with large corporations, where advertising strategies rely on data, stability, and predictability. For Musk, it is a reminder that his extreme creativity and “hyperpersonal” management style—which worked well for tech companies like Tesla and SpaceX—may not be a good fit for the advertising world, where brands place a premium on prestige and control over their image.

It is known that the human resources crisis at X Corp has become more evident than ever in recent months, when a series of senior leaders left, leaving a big question mark about the direction and stability of the organization in a volatile period.

Since the beginning of 2025, X has continuously lost key personnel: from the Director of Communications after only three months in office, to CEO Linda Yaccarino suddenly resigning in July, and most recently, John Nitti – Director of Advertising – leaving the company after only 10 months in office.

According to multiple sources, the reasons for this situation include: constant strategic changes, a stressful work environment leading to burnout, decision-making power focused on Elon Musk rather than the executive team, and pressure to increase advertising revenue while the brand and reputation are being damaged. The Irish Times article stated: “Elon Musk is affected by a wave of senior staff exodus due to strategic stress.”

From an organizational perspective, this situation is not only a personal loss, but also reflects an “internal crisis of confidence.” When leadership turnover is high, teams across the company must constantly adapt to new strategies, personnel changes, and cultures. This erodes stability, weakens long-term execution, and makes it difficult for clients—in this case, large advertisers—to bet on the platform.