Three years after being removed from Twitter, former CEO Parag Agrawal returns with new AI startup

Parag Agarwal has launched his own artificial intelligence company, Parallel Web Systems Inc, a cloud platform designed to help AI systems conduct online research
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal
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Nearly three years after he was removed from X (formerly Twitter), by Elon Musk, former CEO Parag Agrawal is back in the headlines, and this time from Silicon Valley’s AI frontlines.

As per a report by India Today, the ex-Twitter chief has launched his own artificial intelligence company, Parallel Web Systems Inc, a cloud platform designed to help AI systems conduct online research faster, smarter, and with greater accuracy.

Quiet build-up in Palo Alto

Agrawal founded Parallel in 2023, and has been quietly assembling a 25-member team in Palo Alto. 

Backed by big-name investors such as Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures, the two-year-old company has already raised $30 million.

According to a blog post by the company, Parallel’s technology is already processing millions of research tasks daily for early adopters, including what Agrawal calls “some of the fastest-growing AI companies.”

What does Parallel do?

In simple terms, Parallel’s platform allows AI applications to tap into real-time public web data and integrate it directly into their responses.

The system offers eight distinct “research engines” varying in speed and depth. The fastest responds in under a minute, while the most advanced can spend up to 30 minutes digging for highly detailed data.

“(It is) the only AI system to outperform both humans and leading AI models like GPT-5 on the most rigorous benchmarks for deep web research,” the company notes.

His comeback

Agrawal’s comeback is a stark contrast to the chaos of late 2022. That October, after months of legal wrangling with Musk over his $44 billion Twitter takeover, Agrawal was still CEO until Musk closed the deal and swiftly removed most of the leadership team.

Instead of taking a break, Agrawal went back to reading research papers and writing code.

As per a report by Bloomberg, Agarwal initially explored an AI healthcare venture, but kept returning to what he saw as an urgent need: giving AI agents the ability to reliably find and interpret information from the web.

Now, with Parallel, he’s indirectly back in competition with Musk.

“You’ll probably deploy 50 agents on your behalf to be on the internet. And that’s going to happen soon, like next year,” Agrawal told Bloomberg.

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