Parag Agrawal (; born 21 May 1984) is an Indian-American software engineer who was the CEO of

Twitter, Inc. Twitter, Inc. is an American social media company based in San Francisco, California. The company operates the social networking service Twitter. It previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service. Twitter ...

from November 2021 to October 2022. He was fired, along with three other top executives, on October 27, 2022, following

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

’s

purchase Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly betwe ...

of the company.

Early life and education

Agrawal was born in

Ajmer Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "''Aj ...

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...

. His father was a senior official in the Indian

Department of Atomic Energy The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''Paramāṇu Ūrjā Vibhāga'') is a department with headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. DAE was established in 1954 by a Presidential Or ...

and his mother is a retired Economics professor from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in Mumbai. In 2001, he completed his final year of higher secondary education at Atomic Energy Junior College, Mumbai. In the same year, he secured a gold medal in the

International Physics Olympiad The International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) is an annual physics competition for high school students. It is one of the International Science Olympiads. The first IPhO was held in Warsaw, Poland in 1967. Each national delegation is made up of at ...

held in

Antalya Antalya () is the fifth-most populous city in Turkey as well as the capital of Antalya Province. Located on Anatolia's southwest coast bordered by the Taurus Mountains, Antalya is the largest Turkish city on the Mediterranean coast outside the Ae ...

, Turkey. In 2005, Agrawal obtained his

Bachelor of Technology A Bachelor of Technology (Latin ''Baccalaureus Technologiae'', commonly abbreviated as B.Tech. or BTech; with honours as B.Tech. (Hons.)) is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after the completion of a three to five-year program of stu ...

degree in computer science and engineering from

IIT Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top rank ...

. That year, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science at Stanford University under the guidance of Jennifer Widom. His Stanford doctoral thesis, published in 2012, is titled "Incorporating Uncertainty in Data Management and Integration".

Career

Agrawal held research internships at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Research and

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

Research before joining Twitter as a software engineer in 2011. In October 2017, Twitter announced the appointment of Agrawal as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Messinger. 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. On November 29, 2021, Dorsey announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter and that Agrawal was replacing him immediately. As CEO, Agrawal was awarded annual compensation of $1 million as well as stock compensation worth $12.5 million. Agrawal was fired as CEO once

completed his acquisition of the company on October 27, 2022.

Views and policies

In an interview with ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

'' in November 2020, when asked about freedom of speech regarding Twitter, Agrawal said: "Our role is not to be bound by the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation ... nd tofocus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed."

Personal life

Agrawal is married to

Vineeta Agarwala Vineeta may refer to:: * Vineeta Bal, Indian scientist at National Institute of Immunology, India * Vineeta Rai, Indian former civil servant * Vineeta Rastogi (1968-1995), American AIDS activist, public health worker and Peace Corps Volunteer ** Vi ...

, general partner at the venture capital firm

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

. They have two children, born in 2018 and 2022. He took paternity leave as the CEO of Twitter for the birth of his second child.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Agrawal, Parag 1984 births American chief technology officers American technology chief executives Indian emigrants to the United States IIT Bombay alumni Living people People from Ajmer Stanford University alumni Twitter, Inc. people