Twitter’s Ex-CEO Is Moving Past His Elon Musk Drama and Starting an AI Company
Parag Agrawal says AI agents are the target customers for his new startup, Parallel.
Parag Agrawal
Photo illustration: 731; Photo: Getty Images (1)No one would have blamed Parag Agrawal if, in October 2022, he threw away his phone and went into hiding. The former Twitter chief executive officer had just spent six months fighting Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, in Delaware chancery court and the court of public opinion. Musk had made Agrawal’s life hell. First he wanted to buy Twitter, then he didn’t, then he accused the company of lying to shareholders. The board was eventually forced to sue Musk into buying the company—a successful legal maneuver that also cost Agrawal his job: The first thing Musk did after closing on the $44 billion deal was fire most of the C-suite, including Agrawal, without severance.
As Musk publicly dismantled Twitter and turned it into X, Agrawal’s friends and former co-workers kept telling him he needed a break. Instead, he took meetings at the Blue Bottle coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto, California, and started reading research papers and writing code again. “I’m not a person that can enjoy the beach in that moment,” Agrawal says.