IIT graduates are leading a few of the biggest tech companies in the world. A huge bunch of the multi-billion dollar tech companies are currently being led by IIT Bombay graduates hired with huge salary packages. IIT graduate leaders of these companies are often in the news for their innovation and vision. One such IIT graduate has made it to the headlines several times and was trending all across the globe when he was hired by a social media giant as a CEO with a massive salary package. When the IIT Bombay graduate was hired, his salary was around Rs 8 crore apart from the restricted stock units valued at around Rs 94 crore. Overall, the IITians salary package was more than Rs 100 crore but before he could complete a year as the CEO, he was fired by the company. The unfortunate IIT graduate that we are talking about is Parag Agarwal, who was once the CEO of Twitter. Parag Agarwal was fired as Twitter CEO after he ‘forced’ Elon Musk to buy Twitter in a massive Rs 336000 crore deal. Elon Musk fired Parag Agarwal soon after getting hold of the company and served as CEO for the first few months.
As per an excerpt from a book by Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner, before the Twitter buyout deal, Parag denied Elon Musk’s request to block the account that was tracking the location of the billionaire's private jet. IIT graduate Parag Agarwal’s denial to block the account led to Elon Musk purchasing Twitter in a massive Rs 336000 crore deal, the excerpt reveals.
Since Parag Agarwal was let go by his former employer, not much was known about the IIT graduate. However as per latest reports, the IIT graduate has now got around Rs 249 crore as funding for his AI startup. IIT graduate’s startup is reportedly building software for developers of large language models, popularised by OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. As per the report, Vinod Khosla-led Khosla Ventures, an early backer of OpenAI, led the funding in Agrawal’s company. Apart from this, Index Ventures and First Round Capital, also reportedly participated in the deal.
Born in Ajmer, Parag Agrawal was part of a well-educated family. His father was a senior official in the Indian Department of Atomic Energy and his mother is a retired Economics professor. Agrawal completed his graduation from IIT Bombay in 2005 after securing 77 all India rank (AIR). Later he went to the United States to pursue a PhD in computer science at Stanford University.
Before joining Twitter in 2011, Agrawal did internships at Microsoft Research and Yahoo. After working at Twitter for around 6 years, he was appointed as chief technology officer following the departure of Adam Messinger.
