CTO Parag Agrawal to replace Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter Inc. will be stepping down and handing over his role to CTO Parag Agrawal.

Time reports that although Dorsey will remain on the board until the end of his term in 2022, his decision to step down will be immediate. Dorsey was serving as the CEO of both Twitter and his digital payment company, Square, and will continue to lead Square in this role.

“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said. “My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead.” Agrawal, 37, has served as Twitter’s CTO since 2017, but has been with the company for over a decade (CNBC). He has led several projects for Twitter, and is in charge of strategy with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

A notable research project of his was related to Project Bluesky, which was a project launched by Twitter to decentralized standards for social media platforms. Dorsey had previously announced that Bluesky would allow social media companies to work together to determine how posts are promoted to users across platforms.

This would also allow these platforms to collectively enforce restrictions on hate speech and other violations. Dorsey posted an email of his on Twitter saying Agrawal had been his choice to take over as CEO, “for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”

Dorsey had previously been under fire from Twitter stakeholder Elliott Management. Paul Singer, Elliott Management founder and billionaire investor, was concerned that the CEO was running two companies at once. Singer called for Dorsey to step down from one of the companies.

Mandeep Signh, an analyst from Bloomberg Intelligence said, “When you compare Twitter to all the other social media platforms, the level of engagement they had, they were never able to monetize it as well as some. Investors recognize having one man be the CEO of two companies wasn’t very effective in terms of execution.”

As the company faces more pressure from younger competitors, such as TikTok and Snapchat, they will have to adjust their platform to attract some of that younger demographic that their rivals currently hold.