Who is Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal? Jack Dorsey anoints an Indian-American AI expert who calls Amazon’s new boss Andy Jassy a friend
- Agrawal follows the success of fellow Indian-Americans Satya Nadella at Microsoft and Sundar Pichai at Google, and at 37 is the same age as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg
- Wife Vineeta is a doctor and a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz – he’s a machine leaning guru who rose through Twitter’s ranks in just a decade
Dorsey chose Indian-American engineer and CTO, Parag Agrawal, 37, as his replacement.
So who is he?
Agrawal has been Twitter’s technology chief since 2017, but joined in 2011 as an engineer specialising in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In an announcement to staff on Monday morning, he said his priorities as CEO include improving working conditions and helping Twitter achieve its “ambitious goals”.
Agrawal has taken over during a promising period for Twitter, a company that has struggled in the past to grow users and make a profit. In a July call with investors, the company reported yearly revenue up 74 per cent to US$1.19 billion and monetisable daily active users up by 11 per cent to 206 million.
The company also recently released Twitter Blue, a long-awaited US$3 subscription service that, among other features, lets users undo tweets.
“I recognise that some of you know me well, some just a little and some not at all,” Agrawal told employees. “Let’s consider ourselves at the beginning – the first step towards our future.”
Agrawal advanced machine learning during his tenure as CTO