Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal starts a new AI Startup
Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal starts a new AI Startup
Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Is Back — and He’s Building an AI Startup Called Parallel. Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, has re-emerged with a new venture aimed at helping AI systems read, research, and reason across the live web.
He has launched Parallel Web Systems Inc., (short: Parallel) a cloud platform that powers “deep web research” for AI. The company says its Deep Research API lets AI agents search, read, extract structured facts, and synthesize long-form answers—claiming state-of-the-art results on tough benchmarks designed for web-researching AIs.
His startup wants to make the internet easier for AI agents to use—so they can run deep research, verify sources, and generate reliable answers for people and products.
Who Is Parag Agrawal?
New AI Startup Products & Services
Name & Location: The company is called Parallel Web Systems Inc. and has a ~25-member team based in Palo Alto, California. It has raised $30 million from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures.
What It Builds: Parallel provides web infrastructure for AIs—notably a Deep Research API and agent-ready Search/Task APIs—so tools like chatbots and coding agents can programmatically browse sources, extract structured data, and produce cited, multi-step syntheses.
How It Performs: In public posts and technical write-ups, Parallel reports leading scores on benchmarks such as BrowseComp (from OpenAI) and DeepResearch Bench, with its top “Ultra” engines beating strong baselines and even human experts on certain tasks. Independent tech coverage has echoed those claims. (As with all vendor benchmarks, treat numbers as directional until third-party replications arrive.)
Who It’s For: The company says it is already powering “millions of research tasks” for fast-growing AI startups and at least one public enterprise, and is positioning its stack as the backbone for production-grade “deep research” features in apps.
Top FAQs
- What’s the startup called?
- Parallel Web Systems Inc. (often shortened to Parallel).
- Where is it based and how big is the team?
- Palo Alto, California, with roughly 25 employees (as of the public launch).
- How much funding has it raised and from whom?
- $30 million from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures.
- What products/services does Parallel offer?
- An AI-ready Deep Research API plus Search and Task APIs that let agents browse, extract structured facts, and synthesize long-form answers with citations.
- Does it really outperform leading models like GPT-5?
- Parallel cites higher scores on benchmarks such as BrowseComp and DeepResearch Bench; third-party tech outlets have reported those claims. Independent validation will be important as usage grows.
- What’s Parag Agrawal’s background?
- Joined Twitter in 2011, became CTO in 2017, and CEO in 2021; holds degrees from IIT Bombay and Stanford (MS/PhD).
- Why did he leave Twitter?
- He was fired when Elon Musk took ownership in late October 2022.
