On Monday, November 29, 2021, Jack Dorsey announced that he had resigned from his role as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Twitter, and Parag Agrawal would take over from him.
While noting that his decision to resign from Twitter wasn’t an easy one, Dorsey said he was handling it over to Agrawal, who would succeed as the CEO of the micro-blogging site.
“He’s been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs,” Dorsey, 45, wrote, as he endorsed the appointment of Parag Agrawal as his successor.
Following his appointment as Dorsey’s successor at Twitter, Agrawal becomes the latest India-born executive to take over a major American technology company.
Accepting his new role in Twitter, Agrawal wrote the company’s staff in a mail that read: “I joined this company 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees.
“I’ve walked in your shoes, I’ve seen the ups and downs, the challenges and obstacles, the wins and the mistakes. But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s incredible impact, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead of us.”
All You Need to Know About Parag Agrawal, Twitter CEO
1. New Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal is aged 37, married to a beautiful wife Vineeta Agrawal, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz leading investments in biology companies, including therapeutics, diagnostics, and digital health. The two are raising a three-year-old son Ansh Agrawal.
2. Agrawal resides in San Francisco, California, the United States and his net worth has reached $1.52 million. However, his exact financial details are yet to be known.
3. Agrawal attended Atomic Energy Central School in India’s Maharashtra state, an alumnus of IIT Mumbai, did his bachelor in engineering (BS) from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Then he moved to the US and obtained Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University
4. Agrawal will be among the youngest CEOs to lead major tech firms at 37-years-old, the same age as Mark Zuckerberg.
5. Agrawal becomes the latest India-born executive to take over a major American technology company.
6. Agrawal joined Twitter in October 2011 as a distinguished software engineer specialising in artificial intelligence and machine learning. After working for six years, he was appointed the CTO of the platform in October 2017.
7. As chief of technology, Agrawal oversaw Twitter’s technical strategy and improving development velocity and has worked on addressing algorithmic bias during his time as CTO.
8. Agrawal changed Twitter’s image cropping algorithm to rely less on machine learning after users noticed the images on the site cropped out Black people and centered white faces instead.
9. Agrawal also led Twitter’s ambitious Blue Sky initiative, which is funding engineers to develop a decentralized social media landscape.
10. Agrawal, a low-profile technologist received Twitter’s first Distinguished Engineer title by helping grow the platform’s audience through revenue and consumer engineering.
11. He briefly worked at Microsoft, AT&T and Yahoo. In all three companies, his work was mostly research-oriented.
12. At Twitter, as CTO, Parag has been instrumental in “Twitter’s technical strategy and overseeing machine learning and AI across the consumer, revenue, and science teams.”
13. Agrawal has fostered strong relationships with former AWS lead Andy Jassy, who spent 15 years growing AWS to a $40 billion business before he replaced Jeff Bezos as Amazon’s CEO earlier this year.
14. He joined a research group focused on databases, which let computers store and mine large amounts of digital information.
15. He was a member of what was known as the Twitter Architecture Group, or T.A.G., a team of top engineers who reviewed and improved the company’s projects that were under development.
16. Agrawal helped Twitter shift to using cloud computing services from Google and Amazon, streamlining its operations.
17. Agrawal has also managed Twitter’s effort to incorporate cryptocurrencies into the platform, letting users send tips in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
18. Agrawal will receive an annual salary of $1,000,000 and will continue to be a participant in the Company’s executive bonus plan with a new target bonus of 150% of his annual base salary, according to a company filing on Monday.
19. Agrawal restricted stock units (“RSUs”) with a grant date face value of $12,500,000. The RSUs will vest in 16 equal quarterly increments (each being 6.25% of the grant) starting February 1, 2022, subject in each case to Agrawal remaining an employee of the Company through the applicable vesting date. In April 2022, the Board will grant Agrawal performance-based RSUs (“PRSUs”) with a grant date face value of $12,500,000. The performance goals for those PRSUs will be determined by the Compensation Committee of the Board (the “Committee”) on or before the grant date.
20. He has accumulated over 82.5 thousand followers on Twitter and around 900 followers on Instagram