Parag Agrawal, former Twitter CEO, returns with AI startup and secures $30 million in funding from Khosla Ventures.

Twitter, now known as X, has undergone significant changes in recent years. In 2021, CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down and was succeeded by CTO Parag Agrawal. However, Agrawal’s time at the helm was short-lived, as Elon Musk, the billionaire, took control of the microblogging platform just a year later. This resulted in a mass departure of employees from the company. Since then, X has introduced new features and undergone a complete rebranding. Meanwhile, there was little information available about the future of ousted CEO Parag Agrawal. However, that has changed as Agrawal has resurfaced with an AI startup that has already secured $30 million in funding, led by Khosla Ventures.

Parag Agrawal

Agrawal joined Twitter 10 years ago when the company had less than 1,000 employees. Upon joining, he was named Distinguished Software Engineer and rose to Chief Technology Officer at Twitter before eventually taking over from Dorsey as CEO before being ousted. He was also responsible for leading Twitter’s Bluesky project, which aimed to create an open and decentralized standard for the social networking protocol, leading to the proposal of far-reaching changes.

Since then, Agrawal has been hard at work creating an AI startup that aims to develop specialized software for Large Language Models (LLM) developers, The Information reported, citing two people familiar with the deal.

For the uninitiated, LLMs are machine learning (ML) models that can understand and even produce human-language text. These models form the basis of AI programs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Bard.

The name of the AI startup was not disclosed, but it was funded by Khosla Ventures, led by entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, a company that was previously an early backer of Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Other companies that have invested in Parag Agrawal’s AI startup include Index Ventures and First Round Capital. In total, the AI startup has raised $30 million in funding.

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