Agrawal was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan. Later he shifted to Mumbai where his father was a senior official in Department of Atomic Energy and his mother a school teacher.
Agrawal was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan. Later he shifted to Mumbai where his father was a senior official in Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired school teacher.
Andalib Akhter / AMN
Brilliant Computer Engineer from India Parag Agrawal has been appointed as the new CEO of micro-blogging platform Twitter on Monday Nov 29. Parag, who was previously served as the company technology head replaced Jack Dorsey as chief executive officer.
Parag joined Twitter in 2011 and served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) since October 2017. As CTO, he was responsible for the Company’s technical strategy, leading work to improve development velocity while advancing the state of Machine Learning across the company. Parag was named Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2021.
According to the company’s filling at US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the new Twitter chief, Parag Agrawal will receive an annual salary of more than $1 million ($1,000,000 ) along with other perks and bonuses.
He will also be participant in the company’s executive bonus plan with a new target bonus of 150 per cent of his annual base salary. Twitter Board will also grant Parag Agrawal Restricted Stock Units (RSU) with a grant date face value Of $12.5 million.
“Parag Agrawal will receive an annual salary of USD 1,000,000 and will continue to be a participant in the company’s executive bonus plan with a new target bonus of 150 per cent of his annual base salary. Under the terms of the Offer Letter, in December 2021, the Board will grant to Mr Agrawal restricted stock units (RSUs) with a grant date face value of USD 12,500,000,” said a regulatory filing by Twitter to the US SEC.
The filing added that the RSUs will vest in 16 equal quarterly increments (each being 6.25 per cent of the grant) starting February 1, 2022, subject in each case to Agrawal remaining an employee of Twitter through the applicable vesting date.
The 37 years-old CEO holds a bachelor’s degree from IIT Bombay and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University.
On November 29, Dorsey had announced that he is stepping down from his position. He named Agrawal as his successor on the same day. Dorsey will remain on the Board until his term expires in 2022.
Agrawal is the latest Indian to join the growing list of India-born CEOs of tech companies. For example Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe CEO and Rangarajan Raghuram of VMware.
Agrawal was born in Ajmer, Rajasthan. Later he shifted to Mumbai where his father was a senior official in Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired school teacher. He studied at Atomic Energy Central School No.4. Agrawal won a gold medal at the 2001 International Physics Olympiad held in Turkey. He earned 77th rank in the Joint Entrance Exam in 2000, and Agrawal obtained his B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2005. Agrawal then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science from Stanford University under the guidance of Jennifer Widom.
Prior to joining Twitter as a software engineer in 2011, Parag held leadership positions at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research. In October 2017, Twitter announced Agrawal as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Massinger. 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.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review in November 2020, when asked about balancing the protection of free speech as a core value and the endeavor to combat misinformation, Agrawal said: “Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation… focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”
He is married to Vineeta Agrawal who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm.