Parag Agrawal, the former Twitter CEO ousted by Elon Musk in 2022, has launched a new startup focused on building tools for artificial intelligence agents to use the web.
Agrawal’s company, Parallel Web Systems Inc., is developing infrastructure that allows AI agents to autonomously collect and analyze online information. In a LinkedIn post on Friday, Agrawal said the company’s first product, the Deep Research API, already powers “millions of research tasks every day” and can outperform humans and leading AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5, on some benchmarks.
He added that a publicly traded firm is automating workflows with Parallel’s technology and that coding agents are using the tools to search documents and debug problems. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Parallel has raised $30 million in funding and employs a team of 25 people.
The venture marks Agrawal’s first major role since leaving Twitter, which Musk rebranded as X. Musk fired Agrawal and other executives after taking control of the social media platform in October 2022. The group later sued Musk, claiming they were denied roughly $128 million in severance pay. The case is still moving through court.
Agrawal first joined Twitter in 2011 as an engineer and rose to chief technology officer under Jack Dorsey. He became CEO in November 2021, serving less than a year before Musk’s takeover.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Agrawal said that after his exit from Twitter he returned to hands-on AI work, writing code and reading research papers. He rejected offers from tech firms in trouble, saying he wanted to focus on AI.
His first idea was an AI-powered healthcare project, but he shifted direction after deciding that autonomous agents would become the web’s biggest users.
“There’ll be more agents on the internet than there are humans around,” Agrawal said. “You will probably deploy 50 agents on your behalf to be on the internet. I think that’s going to happen soon, like next year.”
Agrawal’s focus mirrors recent forecasts from Coinbase developers, who said autonomous AI agents could become Ethereum’s largest users, paying for services and content with stablecoins. They predicted that agents will handle e-commerce transactions and even allow machines like self-driving cars to pay for their own fuel.
