Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter is stepping down and Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s current Chief Technology Officer, will replace him, the company announced on Monday.
Jack Dorsey, who is currently 45 years of age, was both the CEO of Twitter as well as Square (a digital payments company). Dorsey will stay a member of the board until the expiry of his term at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.
Dorsey said in a statement, “I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders.”
Agrawal, who is currently 37 years of age, will have a task to meet the aggressive internal goals of Twitter. The company expressed at the start of this year that it is aiming for 315 million monetizable daily active users till 2023 and a minimum of double its yearly revenue in that year.
Agrawal served as a CTO of Twitter since 2017 and he has been with the company for more than a decade.
Agrawal was in charge of strategy related to machine learning and artificial intelligence. He led projects for making tweets in timelines of users making more relevant to them.
Agrawal was also involved in research internships at Microsoft, AT&T, and Yahoo before joining Twitter.
Dorsey expressed in an email published by him on Twitter, “Agrawal has been his choice to lead the company for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”
Twitter’s managing partner Jesse Cohn and senior portfolio manager Marc Steinberg said, “Having gotten to know both incoming Chairman Bret Taylor and incoming CEO Parag Agrawal, we are confident that they are the right leaders for Twitter at this pivotal moment for the company.”