Parag Agrawal: New CEO sheds low profile to take Twitter helm

Parag Agrawal, who took over Monday as the new head of Twitter, shot from relative obscurity as the platform’s technology expert to becoming the latest India-born talent to lead a US tech giant.

Unlike his predecessor, co-founder Jack Dorsey, Agrawal enjoyed until Monday a much more low-profile role at the company, with only about 24,000 followers on the platform, compared to Dorsey’s almost six million.

But with a tweeted statement that began, “Thank you, Jack, I’m honoured and humbled,” Agrawal took the reins of a company aiming to steer away from free speech battles and toward growth.

Agrawal is also the latest India-born star tapped to head a major US-based tech company, following the likes of Google-parent Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“He’s been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around,” Dorsey wrote of Agrawal in a message to Twitter staff.

“He leads with heart and soul and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone-deep.”

Educated in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and holding a PhD from Stanford University in California, Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011 and rose to become its CTO by 2017.

As the head of technology at the firm, he oversaw machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as the company’s broad technical strategy.

These specialities make him a natural choice to replace Dorsey, Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi told AFP.

“Going forward AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) will be more and more critical in making the platform healthier and more engaging for users and more profitable for the company,” she said.

“We might also see some more rigour and rational in the decision-making process,” Milanesi added.

Agrawal was also head of the company’s “Bluesky” push to create a more open and decentralized standard for social media.

“I recognize that some of you know me well, some just a little, and some not at all,” Agrawal said in an email to some 5,500 employees at San Francisco-based Twitter.

The platform has grown far less exponentially than its Silicon Valley neighbours and has very meager net profits compared to the two giants of digital advertising, Google and Facebook’s parent Meta.

Profitable for the first time in 2017, Twitter has slipped back into the red several times since.

Dorsey is perhaps best known to the public as the man who kicked Donald Trump off Twitter, the former president’s preferred megaphone to rally his fans and assail his critics.

But Agrawal has given indications that he does not view the platform as a venue for working out boundaries of free speech.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review in 2020, Agrawal said the company, which became a focus of conservative rage in the US after banning Trump, should “focus less” on free speech.

“Our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation,” he said.

Jack Dorsey quits company

Dorsey, who is also chief executive of payments company Square, was confronted during his tenure by thorny freedom of speech questions, challenges to making the platform profitable and criticism he had spread himself too thin.

With his recognizable look of a shaved head, long beard and unconventional style, Dorsey for years embodied Twitter.

“I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it. It was a tough one for me, of course,” he wrote in an email to Twitter staff announcing his resignation as CEO, which was effective immediately.

“There aren’t many companies that get to this level. And there aren’t many founders that choose their company over their own ego,” he added.

The company said Twitter’s chief technology officer Parag Agrawal has replaced Dorsey in the top post, with Dorsey saying he would remain a member of the board through until around May to help with the transition.

“And after that… I’ll leave the board,” Dorsey wrote. “Why not stay or become chair? I believe it’s really important to allow Parag the space he needs to lead.”

Nasdaq briefly suspended trading of Twitter on Monday, citing “news pending,” and after some volatility, the price was down over 2.5 percent for the day.