Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has stepped down as head of the social media company, effective immediately. Twitter has stated that Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer, will take over the helm.
Prior to his resigning announcement, Dorsey was serving as both the CEO of Twitter and Square, his digital payments company. He will remain a member of the board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders. According to Twitter, Salesforce President and COO Bret Taylor will become the chairman of the board, succeeding Patrick Pichette, a former Google executive, who will remain on the board as chair of the audit committee.
“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said in a statement, though he did not provide any additional detail on why he decided to resign.
Agrawal, who’s served as CTO since 2017, has worked at Twitter for more than 10 years. As CTO, he was in charge of overseeing strategy involving artificial intelligence and machine learning and he led projects to make tweets in users’ timelines more relevant to them.
Agrawal was also previously tasked with finding a leader for Project Bluesky, a research project Twitter launched to establish open and decentralized standards for social media platforms. Bluesky could also make it easier for the social networks to enforce restrictions against hate speech and other abuse, essentially helping them share the load at a lower cost.
Dorsey further stated that Agrawal has been his choice to lead the company saying, “For some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”
“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. 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,” said Twitter’s managing partner Jesse Cohn.
Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006, served as CEO until 2008 before being ousted. He returned to lead Twitter in 2015 after former CEO Dick Costolo stepped down.