Dorsey Steps Down as Twitter CEO, To Be Succeeded by Agrawal

After a unanimous vote from the Board of Directors, Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal, who has been with the company for over a decade, is to succeed Founder Jack Dorsey as CEO effective immediately, the company announced in a press release early this morning. During his tenure, Agrawal will be charged with meeting the ambitious company goals outlined earlier this year.

“'I have 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 am deeply grateful for his skill, heart and soul. It’s his time to lead,” said Dorsey.

After being initially pushed out of the role, under Dorsey’s lead the company enjoyed substantial growth since 2015, with company shares jumping 85 percent. This growth occurred been in parallel to Dorsey’s digital payments company Square, which has grown 1,566 percent since its initial public offering in 2015. In spite of this, stakeholder Elliot Management tried to oust Dorsey last year concerned about Twitter´s business performance as Dorsey juggled to run both public companies. After a fruitful negotiation, Dorsey will remain a Twitter board member until his term expires in 2022 and, more importantly, continue to head as CEO of Square.

Agrawal, who had served as the company’s CTO since 2017, has played an instrumental role in the company’s development. He oversaw the rollout of a strategy that incorporated artificial intelligence and machine learning to make user timelines more relevant. These efforts helped the company’s userbase to swell to 211 million daily users in 2021, growing 13 percent in just a year. In recognition of these tangible results, known understanding of the company and its needs, Agrawal was the ideal candidate to lead the company’s next transformative period.

“Twitter is now executing against an ambitious multi-year plan to dramatically increase the company’s reach and value, and we look forward to the next chapter of Twitter’s story,” said company’s managing partner Jesse Cohn.

Twitter aims to double its annual revenue by adding 104 million monetizable daily actives users by the end of 2023, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing earlier this year. Although the majority of its users are concentrated in the US and Japan, with a combined total of 135.95 million users as of October 2021 according to Statista, the company could find success in Mexico as internet penetration continues to increase. According to Statista, Twitter has now 14 million users in Mexico.