Hyderabad: Former Indian-origin Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, before billionaire Elon Musk's takeover, has entered into the realm of artificial intelligence(AI), reportedly raising $30 million for his startup.
According to a report by The Information, Agrawal, ousted by Twitter (now called X) owner Elon Musk in late 2022, raised about $30 million in funding for an AI start-up, like ChatGPT.
The financing for this start-up was reportedly spearheaded by Khosla Ventures, an early backer of OpenAI, with substantial contributions from renowned venture capital entities Index Ventures and First Round Capital, the report said.
Agarwal's venture name and product details have not been revealed yet but people familiar with it said that the startup is reportedly building software for developers of large language models, popularised by OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.
Late last year, Agrawal, former policy lead Vijaya Gadde, and other executives won $1.1 million in legal fees from Musk-run X Corp. In October 2022, Musk informed Agrawal, Gadde, and former Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal that their employment with the company was terminated as he took control of the micro-blogging platform for $44 billion.
According to reports, these three top executives had an exit package of around $90-100 million when they left Twitter. Agrawal was set to receive the largest payout at around $40 million, largely due "to the entirety of his shares vesting upon his firing”.
The IIT Bombay and Stanford alumnus, Parag Agrawal was designated as the first Indian-origin CEO of Twitter in November 2021, after joining the company in 2011 with less than 1,000 employees.
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