Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Launches $30M AI Startup Outperforming GPT-5

Parag Agrawal, the current CEO ousted from Twitter (now X) following Elon Musk's takeover, has launched an AI startup called Parallel Web Systems Inc., which focuses on enabling AI systems to access and interact with real-time public web data. Founded in 2023 and backed by prominent investors such as Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, and First Round Capital, Parallel has raised approximately $30 million and is already powering millions of research tasks daily for early adopters, including fast-growing AI companies. The platform offers eight distinct research engines that vary in speed and depth, with the most advanced engine, Ultra8x, capable of conducting deep analysis over 30 minutes and outperforming OpenAI's GPT-5 and human participants on benchmarks like BrowseComp and DeepResearch Bench. Parallel's technology not only fetches and organizes web data but also verifies information and assigns confidence scores, aiming to build infrastructure for AI agents to use the web more effectively than humans. Agrawal's return to the tech scene with Parallel marks a significant shift from his turbulent exit from Twitter under Musk, amidst ongoing legal disputes over severance pay. This new venture highlights Agrawal's focus on AI innovation, particularly in enhancing AI research capabilities through web interaction.