Twitter announced the appointment of Parag Agrawal, who has served as the Chief Technology Officer of the company since 2017, as the new CEO immediately, while Bret Taylor will become the new Chairman of the Board. Bret Taylor, the new Chairman of Twitter's Board, stated, "Jack has returned to Twitter and turned the company around at the most challenging times... Jack has given the world something priceless, and we will continue to push it forward." The company's stock jumped by 10% in pre-market trading and more than 4% during the session, which saw trading halted pending disclosure shortly after the news of Jack's resignation broke on CNBC.
Elliott Management, which owns a 4% stake in Twitter, expressed concerns not only about Dorsey's role at Square but also about his leadership style and plans to spend at least half a year in Africa exploring opportunities in cryptocurrencies, a trip that was later canceled. Parag Agrawal, of Indian origin, has worked at Twitter for the past decade, joining the company as a distinguished software engineer before becoming Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, Parag was responsible for "Twitter's technical strategy and overseeing machine learning and artificial intelligence across consumer, revenue, and science teams."
Before joining Twitter, Agrawal worked with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T Labs. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and completed his PhD at Stanford University. Agrawal's net worth is reportedly $1.52 million according to PeopleAI.
Bret Taylor is an American entrepreneur and computer programmer who co-created Google Maps and Google Maps API. Taylor left Google in June 2007 to join the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, where he and Jim Norris, a former Google employee, created the social networking site FriendFeed. Taylor served as CEO of FriendFeed until August 2009 when the company was acquired by Facebook for approximately $50 million. He also served as Facebook's Chief Technology Officer until the summer of 2012 when he left to start his own company. Taylor studied at Stanford University, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 2002 and a Master’s degree in 2003 in Computer Science. On June 15, 2012, Taylor announced his plans to leave Facebook to start a new company, and on July 30, 2013, Quip (a software company) announced him as a founder. On July 5, 2016, Twitter announced Taylor's appointment to its Board of Directors.
