Ousted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal raising funds for his AI startup

The former CEO of Twitter is reportedly building an AI startup and has raised about $30 million for the venture. The startup creates software for LLM developers. While Khosla Ventures led the funding round, venture capital firms Index Ventures and First Round Capital were also involved in the funding. Agrawal was CEO of Twitter from November 2021 until October 2022, when he was fired by Elon Musk.  

Musk's $44 billion takeover of Twitter, since renamed X, was finalized on October 27 following a series of dramatic series of events. Musk started buying Twitter stock in January 2022 and by April he became its biggest shareholder with a 9.2% stake.  

That month Agrawal tweeted that Musk was joining the board after meeting with the Tesla CEO and former Twitter chair Bret Taylor. However, Agrawal soon backtracked and said Musk would no longer join the board after he tweeted "is Twitter dying?"  

Twitter accepted Musk's offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in April, but by May he was trying to put the deal "on hold" until Twitter gave him more data about the number of bots on the platform.  

In July Musk tried to pull the plug on the deal and sent a termination letter to Twitter, claiming it withheld or distorted data on the number of bots. 

By October 4, Musk's lawyers sent Twitter a letter reviving the original offer. The deal finally completed on October 27 and soon after Musk fired Agrawal, along with former CFO Ned Segal and ex-chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde.