Ex-Twitter CEO Agrawal’s AI search startup Parallel raises US$100 million

AI STARTUP Parallel Web Systems, founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised US$100 million to build web search infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents and fund deals with online content owners, Agrawal said in an interview.

The Series A round, which values the company at US$740 million, was co-led by venture firms Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures, with participation from other existing backers including Khosla Ventures.

Parallel aims to address what it sees as a fundamental shift in internet use, as AI agents increasingly become the web’s primary users.

The company builds application programming interfaces (APIs) that let AI systems search the live web for up-to-date information to complete tasks.

Agrawal said its enterprise customers use Parallel to power AI agents that write software code, analyse customer data for sales teams and assess risk for insurance underwriting - areas where high-quality web data, alongside internal systems, is critical.

“How many jobs are there where we could turn off web access and ask you to do the same job fully?” Agrawal told Reuters. “You can’t deprive an M&A lawyer from not being able to use the web, so why would you deprive their agents?”

He said he believed the startup’s technology was superior to built-in web search functions offered by AI-model providers.

Unlike traditional search engines that rank links for humans to click, Parallel’s system returns optimised content, or “tokens,” designed to feed directly into an AI model’s context window.

The company says this approach improves accuracy, reduces “hallucinations”, or false information, and cuts operational costs for customers.

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Agrawal said the new capital will allow Parallel to “go all in” on product development and customer acquisition.

Some of the funds will also go toward tackling the challenge of web content increasingly being locked behind paywalls and login barriers to prevent AI web scraping, as web owners from publishers to social media platforms see traffic decline as the rise of AI chatbots changes how people access information.

Agrawal said Parallel plans to develop an “open market mechanism” - a new economic model to incentivise publishers to keep content accessible to AI systems, though he did not provide details.

Founded two years ago, Parallel first launched its products in August 2025. The company previously raised US$30 million in January 2024. REUTERS

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