Billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday that he anticipates finding a CEO for Twitter “probably toward the end of this year”.

Speaking via a video call to the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said making sure the platform can function remained the most important thing for him.

“I think I need to stabilise the organisation and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place,” Musk said when asked about when he’d name a CEO. “I’m guessing probably toward the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.”

Musk, 51, made his wealth initially on the finance website PayPal, then created the spacecraft company SpaceX and invested in the electric car company Tesla. In recent months, however, more attention has been focused on the chaos surrounding his $44 billion purchase of the microblogging site Twitter.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military’s use of Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink as it defends itself against Russia’s ongoing invasion has put Musk off and on at the centre of the war.

Musk offered a wide-ranging 35-minute discussion that touched on the billionaire’s fears about artificial intelligence, the collapse of civilization and the possibility of space aliens. But questions about Twitter kept coming back up as Musk described both Tesla and SpaceX as able to function without his direct, day-to-day involvement.

“Twitter is still somewhat a startup in reverse,” he said. “There’s work required here to get Twitter to a stable position and build the engine of software engineering.”

Musk also sought to portray his takeover of San Francisco-based Twitter as a cultural correction.

“I think that the general idea is just to reflect the values of the people as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley, which are so somewhat of a niche ideology compared with the rest of the world,” he said. “And, you know, Twitter was, I think, doing a little too much to impose a niche.”

Musk’s takeover at Twitter has seen mass firings and other cost-cutting measures. Musk, who is on the hook for about $1 billion in yearly interest payments for his purchase, has been trying to find a way to maximise company profits.