Former CEO of Twitter (born 1984)
Parag Agrawal (Hindi pronunciation: [pəˈɾaːɡ əɡɾəˈʋaːl]; born 21 May 1984)[2] is an Indian-American software engineer and businessman who was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from November 2021 to October 2022.[3]
Early life and education
Agrawal was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan.[4][5] His father was a senior official in the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired Economics professor from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai.[6]
In 2001, he completed his final year of higher secondary education at Atomic Energy Junior College, Mumbai.[7] In the same year, he secured a gold medal in the International Physics Olympiad held in Antalya, Turkey.[8][9]
In 2005, Agrawal obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree in computer science and engineering from IIT Bombay.[10] That year, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science at Stanford University under the guidance of Jennifer Widom.[11][12][13] His Stanford doctoral thesis, published in 2012, is titled "Incorporating Uncertainty in Data Management and Integration".[14][15]
Career
Agrawal held research internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research before joining Twitter as a software engineer in 2011.[16] In October 2017, Twitter announced the appointment of Agrawal as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Messinger.[17] In December 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Agrawal would be in charge of Project Bluesky, an initiative to develop a decentralized social network protocol.[18]
In an interview discussing the rise of misinformation on Twitter with MIT Technology Review in November 2020, while still Twitter CTO, when asked about freedom of speech regarding Twitter, Agrawal said: "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation ... [and to] focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."[19]
On November 29, 2021, Dorsey announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter and that Agrawal was replacing him immediately.[20][21][22] As CEO, Agrawal was awarded annual compensation of $1 million as well as stock compensation worth $12.5 million.[11] Agrawal was fired as CEO once Elon Musk completed his acquisition of the company on October 27, 2022.[23][24]
Personal life
Agrawal is married to Vineeta Agarwala,[11][25] general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.[26] They have two children, born in 2018 and 2022.
