Parag Agrawal, the Chief Technology Officer of Twitter, is all set to become the Chief Executive Officer. He will be taking over the position from Jack Dorsey, who will be stepping down from his role.
According to Reuters, the company board has been preparing for Dorsey’s departure since last year.
Dorsey, 45, served as both the CEO of Twitter and Square, a digital payments company. Dorsey announced his resignation and Agrawal’s appointment in a letter he sent to his employees, which he shared on Twitter. “I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” he said in a statement.
Agrawal, 37, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, joined Twitter 10 years ago, in October 2011, as a Distinguished Software Engineer. He did his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay. He graduated in 2005 and then completed his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. While studying at Stanford, he had worked as a research intern for Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AT&T Labs.
On March 8, 2018, he was appointed Twitter CTO, succeeding Adam Messinger, who left the company in December 2016. While Agrawal’s appointment was announced internally in October 2017.
As CTO, Agrawal was responsible for the company’s technical strategy also overseeing machine learning and AI. From his, initial days at Twitter, Agrawal led efforts on scaling Twitter Ads systems and re-accelerating user growth by improving home timeline relevance.
Before joining Twitter, he was involved with research in large-scale data management with collaborators at Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and AT&T Labs.
Taking to Twitter, Agrawal thanked Dorsey for his continued mentorship and friendship. Further, he thanked the entire team for their trust and support.
“Our purpose has never been more important. Our people and culture are unlike anything in the world. There is no limit to what we can do together,” Agrawal wrote in a note shared on his Twitter handle.
He added that “at the all-hands tomorrow we’ll have lots of time for Q&A and discussion”.
“The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and our future, and it’s a signal that the work we do here matters. Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential,” Agrawal said.
Agrawal joins a list of Indian-American tech bosses, including IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Adobe chairman, president and CEO Shantanu Narayen.
