Parag Agrawal spent 11 months at the helm of Twitter, now known as X. Photo: Brendan McDermid ( Reuters )

Parag Agrawal, who was briefly CEO of Twitter before Elon Musk took over the social media platform, has reportedly raised about $30 million in funding for an AI startup.

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His company is building software for developers of large language models (LLMs), according to The Information, which cites unnamed sources. LLMs power generative AI tools like ChatGPT.

Agrawals AI venture marks the start of a new journey for him. After joining Twitter in 2011, he served as a software engineer before being promoted to chief technology officer and replacing Jack Dorsey as CEO. He then spent 11 tumultuous months at the helm before being ousted after Elon Musk closed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now known as X, in April 2022.

Agrawal is yet another tech executive to jump on the bandwagon of pivoting to AI as venture capital keeps flowing into the space. For example, former Twitter board chair Bret Taylor was named chairman of the new OpenAI board late last year. Even X boss Musk has launched his own AI startup, xAI.

This rush by tech execs comes as global funding for AI startups hit nearly $50 billion in 2023, up 9% from the previous year, according to market research firm Crunchbase. Leading players OpenAI, Anthropic, and Inflection collectively raised $18 billion last year. AI is still a bright spot for launching a new company, even as overall startup funding remains lackluster.

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The Twitter CEO ousted by Elon Musk has resurfaced with an AI startup - Quartz