Who Is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s New CEO.?

SAN FRANCISCO — When Jack Dorsey, then Twitter’s executive chairman, pushed the agency to construct out its system studying and synthetic intelligence capabilities in 2014, he turned to an engineer, Parag Agrawal.

When Mr. Dorsey later have become Twitter’s chief govt and wanted assist overhauling the employer’s infrastructure, he additionally tapped Mr. Agrawal.

And while Mr. Dorsey anticipated a future for Twitter in 2019 that might be primarily based at the concept of decentralization and technologies along with the blockchain, he once more pulled in Mr. Agrawal to assist.

On Monday, Mr. Dorsey made the handover whole while he stepped down as leader government and Mr. Agrawal, 37, became named Twitter’s new chief.

Mr. Agrawal, the leader generation officer because 2017, is little regarded to the public, with even some Twitter insiders announcing they have been amazed with the aid of his appointment. But behind the scenes, the India-born engineer has been a Twitter veteran and confidant of Mr. Dorsey’s who has been involved in among the organisation’s largest strategic initiatives. That made Mr. Dorsey effusive about his successor, saying in a tweet that the board had run a “rigorous” look for a brand new chief govt and had “unanimously” advocated Mr. Agrawal.

“He’s been my choice for a while given how deeply he is aware the agency and its desires,” Mr. Dorsey, 45, wrote.

In his very own message to employees on Monday, Mr. Agrawal emphasized his information of the corporation and his kinship with its people.

“I joined this employer 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees,” Mr. Agrawal wrote within the organization electronic mail, which he additionally tweeted. “I’ve walked to your footwear, I’ve seen the u.S.And downs, the demanding situations and limitations, the wins and the mistakes. But then and now, certainly else, I see Twitter’s awesome impact, our continued progress, and the thrilling opportunities ahead people.”

Mr. Agrawal becomes the state-of-the-art India-born govt to take over a main American generation organisation. Executives of South Asian descent are actually at the helm of organizations which includes Microsoft, Google and IBM, with a lot of them succeeding the companies’ founders. To a few in Silicon Valley, Mr. Agrawal’s elevation was the definition of the American dream.

“Wonderful to observe the brilliant fulfillment of Indians inside the technology international and a good reminder of the possibility America gives to immigrants,” Patrick Collison, chief executive of Stripe, stated in a tweet on Monday congratulating Mr. Agrawal.

Yet as Twitter’s new chief, Mr. Agrawal has his work reduce out for him. The organization, that is primarily based in San Francisco, faces challenges, including placating activist buyers and calming an agitated Congress about its electricity, divisiveness and ability to censor loose speech. Mr. Agrawal is likewise charged with sporting out Mr. Dorsey’s imaginative and prescient for decentralizing Twitter in order that its customers can finally govern what is allowable on the provider themselves.

Still, a few tech observers stated that Mr. Agrawal’s appointment made feel due to the fact he changed into a sort of “non secular successor” to Mr. Dorsey: Both are quiet, polite, deeply technical and enthused approximately an internet in which energy and manipulate are given returned to users.

“He surely takes a massive-photograph view of what need to Twitter be within the global and the way have to it work,” Mike Masnick, the founder of the generation news web page Techdirt, who has recommended Twitter on decentralization efforts, said of Mr. Agrawal.

Born in Mumbai, Mr. Agrawal studied pc technological know-how and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, an elite technical university. In 2005, he moved to america and enrolled at Stanford University to pursue a doctorate in computer technology. There, he joined a studies organization targeted on databases, which let computer systems save and mine huge amounts of virtual records.

Even among students at Stanford, Mr. Agrawal stood out for his robust grasp of the math and the idea that underpins laptop science, said Jennifer Widom, who led the research lab and served as his thesis adviser.

“Having both of these abilities — math and principle — can take you a protracted way,” she stated in a telephone interview. “If you’re accurate on the concept, you have got the ability to be analytical, to reason, to make choices.”

Mr. Agrawal’s attention on databases made him a herbal fit for Twitter, which must juggle facts strolling back from tens of thousands and thousands of people throughout the globe. He joined the company in 2011 before finishing his Ph.D. And became a key member of the engineering crew that oversaw the employer’s marketing technologies.

“I saved nagging him to go ahead and end his thesis,” Dr. Widom said.

The commercials crew turned into many of the first internal Twitter to make tremendous use of so-called system mastering, mathematical systems that could learn specific skills with the aid of analyzing information. Using these techniques, Mr. Agrawal and his colleagues evolved ways to goal commercials to precise customers, which helped enhance Twitter’s revenues and his profile.

He then have become a member of what turned into referred to as the Twitter Architecture Group, or T.A.G., a group of top engineers who reviewed and progressed the employer’s initiatives that have been beneath improvement.

“He changed into at the shortlist of top engineers,” stated Krishna Gade, who met Mr. Agrawal when he first interviewed with Twitter. “Even then, he had plenty of influence on the engineering direction of the corporation.” Mr. Gade left Twitter in 2014.

When Mr. Dorsey back to Twitter as chief executive in 2015, Mr. Agrawal became one among his lieutenants who helped refocus the company’s efforts on the “timeline” that feeds tweets into a consumer’s Twitter app. In 2017, Twitter promoted Mr. Agrawal to chief era officer.

“I would call him pragmatic,” said Kevin Quennesson, who oversaw Twitter’s machine studying efforts on the time. “As one of the early engineers, he constructed sturdy inner relationships over the past decade.”

Even as chief generation officer, Mr. Agrawal has saved a low profile. He labored behind the scenes to rebuild Twitter’s technical infrastructure, which had been cobbled together through the years. That led to engineering problems and prevented the organisation from introducing new services and products as quickly as it desired. Mr. Agrawal helped Twitter shift to the usage of cloud computing offerings from Google and Amazon, streamlining its operations.

In 2019, Mr. Dorsey stated that Twitter could fund an impartial studies initiative to create decentralized social media, allowing customers to make their own moderation decisions and practice their very own algorithms to promote content. He tapped Mr. Agrawal to supervise Twitter’s contributions to the assignment, known as Bluesky.

“We trust empowering more individuals and 1/3 parties should assist resolve troubles for communities and assist extra humans,” Mr. Agrawal stated in an interview approximately Bluesky in June. “A lot of human beings need to be part of the solution and now the handiest manner is for them to discern out the way to paintings at Twitter or parent out the way to have their community prioritized by way of a agency like ours. That’s a number of the wondering and reasoning behind algorithmic preference.”

Twitter become eager to transport past questions of what content to eliminate or go away up on its provider, Mr. Agrawal said at the time, and to remember how algorithms elevate content material alternatively.

“Our function has shifted from ‘we host a gaggle of content’ to ‘we manual human beings toward what they’re inquisitive about,’” he stated. “We are considering this in terms of, ‘How does something get interest and in what context?’ What do you host or no longer host is a hassle of 10 years in the past.”

Mr. Agrawal has additionally managed Twitter’s attempt to contain cryptocurrencies into the platform, letting customers send recommendations in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. And he has supported efforts to be obvious approximately Twitter’s algorithmic errors, urging the organisation to go public with its findings that a picture-cropping algorithm it used turned into biased.

Mr. Agrawal’s emphasis on product improvement appealed to insiders who believed Twitter had moved too slowly to introduce new products, a person acquainted with the succession manner stated. His appointment could also assist Twitter replicate the fulfillment of different corporations that have tapped engineering leaders to oversee turnaround efforts, they said.

Mr. Agrawal will acquire an annual revenue of $1 million, plus bonuses, in addition to confined inventory gadgets and performance-based inventory units worth $12.Five million, in step with a business enterprise submitting on Monday.

“Parag has been at the back of every vital decision that helped turn this business enterprise around,” Mr. Dorsey said in his tweet. “My trust in him as our C.E.O. Is bone-deep.”