Ex-Twitter CEO Launches AI Startup to Power Real-Time Web Research

Generated by AI AgentCoin World
Monday, Aug 18, 2025 1:31 am ET1min read
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Aime RobotAime Summary

- Parag Agrawal, ex-Twitter CEO, launched Parallel Web Systems, an AI startup offering real-time web research tools surpassing GPT-5 and human benchmarks.

- The $30M-funded Palo Alto firm powers millions of daily research tasks for clients like public companies and developers, using eight specialized engines.

- Agrawal's vision focuses on autonomous AI agents dominating internet activity, addressing outdated data limitations through live web integration.

- Ultra8x engine outperforms competitors by 10%+ in benchmarks, enabling real-time code access, competitor monitoring, and structured data extraction.

Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter (now X), has launched Parallel Web Systems Inc., an AI startup focused on empowering autonomous agents to collect and analyze real-time data from the web. Agrawal announced the venture through a LinkedIn post, emphasizing that the startup’s first major product, the Deep Research API, outperforms both humans and leading AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5, on specific research benchmarks. Agrawal stated that the platform already powers millions of research tasks daily, with early clients including public companies and coding agents using its tools for automation and debugging [1].

The startup, based in Palo Alto, has raised $30 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, and First Round Capital, supporting a 25-person team. Agrawal, who was ousted by Elon Musk in 2022 following his takeover of Twitter, has since been focused on AI research, turning down offers from struggling tech firms. Agrawal described his vision of a future where AI agents, rather than humans, will dominate internet activity, with individuals potentially deploying dozens of agents for research, commerce, and personal tasks [2].

Parallel Web Systems operates eight specialized research engines, with the fastest returning results in under a minute and the most advanced, Ultra8x, capable of processing queries for up to 30 minutes. Benchmarks such as BrowseComp and DeepResearch Bench show Ultra8x surpasses both GPT-5 and human researchers by over 10 percent. The platform is already being used by developers to access real-time code, retailers to monitor competitors, and analysts to extract structured data from reviews [3].

Agrawal identified a critical limitation in current AI systems—their reliance on outdated training data—and emphasized the need for real-time, verifiable information from the live web. His new venture builds on his experience at Twitter, where he led efforts to build machine learning models before stepping into the CEO role [4].

The launch of Parallel represents a strategic shift from managing a social media platform to developing an AI infrastructure that addresses evolving research and automation needs. Agrawal’s return to the tech space aligns with broader trends in AI development, including recent predictions from

Coinbase
developers that autonomous AI agents could become a key user base for blockchain platforms like
Ethereum
[5].

Source:

[1] Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Launches AI Startup Parallel - https://www.peoplematters.in/news/leadership/ex-twitter-ceo-parag-agrawal-launches-ai-startup-parallel-with-dollar30m-42996

[2] Parag Agrawal Re-emerges With Real-Time AI Research Platform - https://www.businessworld.in/article/ex-twitter-ceo-parag-agrawal-re-emerges-with-real-time-ai-research-platform-567655

[3] Parag Agrawal Launches AI Startup to Power Real-Time - https://www.ainvest.com/news/parag-agrawal-launches-ai-startup-power-real-time-web-research-2508/