Indian-origin man fired by Elon Musk makes a comeback with ₹260 crore AI startup
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₹ 260 crore bet on AI infrastructure
Founded in 2023, Parallel has already raised $30 million (around ₹260 crore) from prominent investors, including Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures, according to Bloomberg and TechCrunch. The startup's mission is to help AI systems conduct large-scale research across the web, a core challenge as demand for real-time, high-quality data accelerates.
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Agrawal, who began his career as a Twitter engineer before rising to CEO in 2021, kept a low profile after being removed when Musk restructured the company, now rebranded as X. His return with Parallel marks a significant shift, from leading a social media giant to building the digital backbone for AI research.
Parallel's focus on 'web intelligence'
In a recent LinkedIn post, Agrawal described Parallel's goal as enabling companies to harness 'web intelligence' for their products. He noted that the platform already powers millions of research tasks daily for startups and enterprises. One unnamed public company, he claimed, has integrated Parallel's system to automate workflows previously handled by humans, achieving results 'exceeding human-level accuracy.'
The company's tools are designed to plug directly into AI platforms and agents, giving them the ability to retrieve, organise, and analyse online information at scale. This functionality is increasingly vital as chatbots, virtual assistants, and enterprise AI products rely on dynamic web data rather than static training sets.
A comeback in Silicon Valley's AI race
For Agrawal, Parallel is more than a business, it's a comeback. His short and turbulent tenure at Twitter ended abruptly in late 2022, when Musk dismissed top executives after completing the acquisition. With Parallel, he is repositioning himself as a founder in one of the fastest-growing segments of the AI industry.
Still, competition looms large. Parallel will face rivals offering retrieval APIs, as well as AI model developers building similar capabilities in-house. Yet, with strong investor backing, early traction, and Agrawal's technical reputation, the startup has already drawn attention as one of Silicon Valley's most ambitious AI bets in 2025.
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