TECH: Jack Dorsey Steps Down as Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal Named As Successor

By Paige Boyd, Managing Editor

After being the face and voice of the social media site he co-founded, Twitter, for over a decade and a half, Jack Dorsey has officially stepped down as CEO, effective immediately. The company announced his departure on Monday, adding that he will remain on the company board through the end of his term at next year's shareholders' meeting.

With Dorsey's departure, the company also announced that Parag Agrawal, previously Twitter's Chief Technology Officer, will step in as the new CEO, according to NBC News.

In a statement, posted shortly after the news broke, Dorsey tweeted, "I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. 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."

He added, "There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led.' Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. And there aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego. I know we'll prove this was the right move."

Although Agrawal is a ten-year employee of Twitter, Monday's announcement marks the first time that many has heard of him. He is considered a close confidant of Dorsey's, working alongside him on several company projects, including efforts to encourage crypto-based tips on the platform and the development of its Bluesky program "to build decentralized social networking software on which any number of platforms could run," according to NPR. He has also spearheaded a team of researchers investigating the accuracy and fairness of Twitter's algorithms, leading to the company to axe its automated photo-cropping system after it was discovered that the software favored white faces.

Despite the fact that he is relatively unknown outside of the company, the 37-year-old computer scientist is looking forward to following through on Twitter's plans for the future.

"We recently updated our strategy to hit ambitious goals, and I believe that strategy to be bold and right," he said in a statement. "But our critical challenge is how we work to execute against it and deliver results — that's how we'll make Twitter the best it can be for our customers, shareholders, and for each of you."