Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Raises $30 Million For His AI Startup

Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, who was ousted by Elon Musk, the current owner of Twitter, now known as X, in late 2022, has raised $30 million for his artificial intelligence (AI) startup, a report by The Information said.

According to the report, Khosla Ventures, led by Vinod Khosla, who had previously supported OpenAI, led the funding round, with Index Ventures and First Round Capital being other investors. However, the exact amount of the investment hasn”t been officially revealed.

Agrawal’s startup is reported to be a software development company focused on developers working with large language models such as ChatGPT. Agarwal, former policy lead Vijaya Gadde, and other executives had last year secured $1.1 million in legal fees from X Corp.”s Elon Musk after a legal victory.

According to the report, upon leaving Twitter, the trio of executives received an exit package totaling around $90-100 million, with Agrawal earning approximately $40 million, primarily due to the vesting of his entire shareholdings following his termination.

Hailing from Ajmer, Rajasthan, Agrawal obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree in computer science and engineering from IIT Bombay before gaining a PhD from Standford University. Agrawal joined Twitter as a software engineer in 2011 and was appointed chief technology officer in 2019 following the departure of Adam Messinger.

However, Agrawal had been fired when Elon Musk took over the company on October 27, 2022.