Who is Parag Agrawal, the exec named as the new Twitter CEO after exit of Jack Dorsey?

In yet another big development for high-flying Indian-origin technology executives, Parag Agrawal has taken over as CEO of Twitter after the resignation from the top post by Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter. After quitting the top post, Dorsey reposed his full faith in the abilities of Parag Agrawal in leading Twitter into the future. Parag joins a number of tech executives holding top jobs at major companies including Satya Nadella at Microsoft and Sundar Pichai at Google, Shantanu Narayan at Adobe, among a number of others

Dorsey took to Twitter to let everyone know about his decision to resign as the CEO. He tweeted: “After almost 16 years of having a role at our company… from co-founder to CEO to Chair to Exec Chair to interim-CEO to CEO… I decided it's finally time for me to leave. Why? There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being "founder-led".

He added, “Ultimately, I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

Dorsey will stay on Twitter till 2022. Agrawal is also joining the board, and director Bret Taylor has been named independent chairman.

Who is Parag Agrawal?

An alumnus of IIT, Bombay and Stanford, Agrawal too took to Twitter and said that he is “honored and humbled” on his appointment and expressed gratitude to Dorsey’s “continued mentorship and your friendship.” 

At IIT Bombay, Parag Agrawal studied B Tech in Computer Science and Engineering. he went on to get his PhD from Stanford University. Apart from twitter, Parag Agrawal has worked for other top tech companies in the US including Microsoft and Yahoo. He was at AT&T Labs before joining Twitter.

Agrawal joined Twitter 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees in the company. On joining his designation was Distinguished Software Engineer and he rose to become the Chief Technology Officer at twitter before taking over from Dorsey today as the CEO.

Parag's duties as the CTO were to look after "Twitter’s technical strategy and overseeing machine learning and AI across the consumer, revenue, and science teams". 

He was also responsible for running Twitter's Bluesky project which was aimed at creating an open and decentralised standard for social network protocol that led to some far-reaching changes being proposed.

Dorsey on Parag Agrawal

Dorsey himself gives an introduction and a glowing report of who Agrawal is:

“The board ran a rigorous process considering all options and unanimously appointed Parag. He's been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs,” Dorsey said.

Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He's curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware and humble, Dorsey added.

“He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” Dorsey said.

Agrawal was gung-ho and humble at the same time about him being bumped up into the top post at Twitter. He said, “But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter's incredible impact, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead of us”.

He added for good measure, “Our purpose has never been more important. Our people and our culture are unlike anything in the world. There is no limit to what we can do together."

Parag Agrawal responds on Twitter after Jack Dorsey steps down as CEO. Read tweet below: