Latest news with #ParallelWebSystemsInc.
NDTV
17 hours ago
- Business
- NDTV
Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Fired By Elon Musk, Launches New Startup
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has introduced Parallel Web Systems Inc., a cloud platform built to help artificial intelligence systems conduct large-scale online research. Mr Agrawal, who was fired by billionaire Elon Musk after he took over Twitter (now known as X) in 2022, founded Parallel in 2023 and has since assembled a 25-member team in Palo Alto. The company has already secured $30 million in funding from marquee investors, including Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures. "We already power millions of research tasks every day, across ambitious startups and public enterprises," Mr Agarwal wrote on LinkedIn. "Some of the fastest growing AI companies use Parallel to bring web intelligence directly into their platform and agents. A public company automates traditionally-human workflows exceeding human-level accuracy with Parallel. Coding agents rely on our search to find docs and debug issues," he added. Parallel has also announced the launch of its Deep Research API, which Mr Agrawal says is the first to outperform both humans and leading models, including GPT-5, on two of the most challenging benchmarks. Inside Parallel Parag Agrawal's new startup, Parallel, is betting on the idea that the internet, as it exists today, was built for people but the next era belongs to artificial intelligence. In a blog post, the company said: The web is humanity's memory. The open internet has enabled publishing, learning, and collaboration at scale. It is the foundation on which modern AI was trained. AI is becoming the web's primary user. Unlike humans, who browse a few pages or run short searches, AIs might comb through entire databases, spend hours processing information, or pull facts instantly at massive scale. Old business models won't work. Today's web relies on human attention like clicks, ads, paywalls, and gated APIs. But these models aren't designed for machine use, and they risk locking valuable knowledge behind silos. A "Programmatic Web" for AIs. Parallel argues the internet must evolve into a system designed for machines, one that supports reasoning, computation, and verified sources. Key Principles Of Parallel The company outlines key principles of this new web: Unified infrastructure combining data, compute, and reasoning, producing insights and actions instead of just static documents. Declarative interfaces where AIs say what they need, and the system decides how to get it. Transparent attribution so every source is credited, and contributions can be measured. Open markets where value is rewarded economically, ensuring openness thrives not just by goodwill but by financial incentives. Parallel frames this as either the web adapting to serve its "second user" (AI) or it risks breaking apart. How Parallel Will Work Parallel is creating a version of the internet built for AI. Instead of humans clicking and searching, AIs will be able to ask for information directly, and Parallel's system will gather, process, and organise it. It will also give credit to sources and reward those who contribute. In short, Parallel makes it easier and fairer for AIs to use the web to find answers and create insights. Parallel's mission is about "building for abundance".
Hans India
2 days ago
- Business
- Hans India
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Returns with $30M AI Startup 'Parallel' to Challenge GPT-5 in Web Research
Almost three years after being abruptly ousted from Twitter by Elon Musk, Parag Agrawal is making a high-profile comeback in Silicon Valley. This time, the former Twitter CEO is leading his own artificial intelligence venture — and it's already drawing attention for outperforming some of the biggest names in the field. Agrawal's new company, Parallel Web Systems Inc., founded in 2023, operates out of Palo Alto with a 25-person team. Backed by major investors such as Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures, Parallel has raised $30 million in funding. According to the company's blog post, its platform is already processing millions of research tasks daily for early adopters, including 'some of the fastest-growing AI companies,' as Agrawal describes them. At its core, Parallel offers agentic AI services that allow AI systems to pull real-time data directly from the public web. The platform doesn't just retrieve information — it verifies, organizes, and even grades the confidence level of its responses. In essence, it gives AI applications a built-in browser with advanced intelligence, enabling more accurate and reliable results. Parallel's technology features eight distinct 'research engines' tailored for different needs. The fastest engine delivers results in under a minute, while its most advanced, Ultra8x, can spend up to 30 minutes digging into highly detailed queries. The company claims Ultra8x has surpassed OpenAI's GPT-5 in independent benchmarks like BrowseComp and DeepResearch Bench by over 10%, making it 'the only AI system to outperform both humans and leading AI models like GPT-5 on the most rigorous benchmarks for deep web research.' The potential applications are wide-ranging. AI coding assistants can use Parallel to pull live snippets from GitHub, retailers can track competitors' product catalogs in real time, and market analysts can have customer reviews compiled into spreadsheets. Developers have access to three APIs, including a low-latency option optimized for chatbots. Agrawal's return to the tech scene comes after a turbulent 2022, when Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter and immediately dismissed most of its top executives, including him. That move followed months of legal disputes over the takeover. Rather than taking a break, Agrawal dived back into research and development. He explored ideas ranging from AI healthcare to data-driven automation, but ultimately zeroed in on what he saw as a critical gap in the AI landscape — giving AI agents the ability to reliably locate and interpret information from the internet. Now, Parallel positions him back in the AI race, and perhaps indirectly, in competition with Musk. Agrawal sees the future of AI as one where multiple autonomous agents will work online simultaneously for individual users. 'You'll probably deploy 50 agents on your behalf to be on the internet,' he predicts. 'And that's going to happen soon, like next year,' he told Bloomberg. With speed, accuracy, and reliability as its edge, Parallel could become a defining player in the next phase of AI innovation.
