IIT graduate with ₹100 crore salary was fired by Elon Musk, now has his own AI firm

IIT graduates are running few of the biggest tech companies in the world right now and one such Indian-origin techie with an impressive compensation package of ₹100 crore was fired by Elon Musk. X, formerly known as Twitter, was acquired by Elon Musk in a massive $44 billion deal. After becoming the new owner of the social media platform, Musk made several major executive changes and he began by firing the CEO of the company. At that time, X was led by an IIT graduate who made headlines across social media platforms when he was hired as the chief of the company. With an IIT-JEE All India Rank (AIR) of 77, the man we are talking about is Parag Agarwal. He garnered significant media attention when he was hired as Twitter’s CEO. His salary was approximately ₹8 crore, supplemented by restricted stock units valued around ₹94 crore, totaling more than ₹100 crore.

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Why was Parag Agarwal fired

According to a book by Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner,Parag denied Elon Musk’s request to block the account that was tracking the location of the billionaire’s private jet. This happened before the Twitter buyout deal. As soon as Musk joined Twitter, he sacked Parag Agarwal and the account tracking location of billionaires’ jets was blocked.

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Life after Twitter

After the layoff, Parag Agarwal was entitled to get around ₹400 crore in severance pay, but he did not receive any compensation. Consequently, Agarwal and other former Twitter executives have filed a lawsuit against Musk, alleging that they were denied over ₹1000 crore in severance payments.

Parag Agarwal is now making strides in the AI sector and he reportedly secured substantial funding of ₹249 crore for his new venture. His startup is focused on developing software for developers working with large language models, similar to the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to reports, Khosla Ventures, led by Vinod Khosla and an early supporter of OpenAI, spearheaded the investment in Agarwal’s company. Additionally, Index Ventures and First Round Capital also participated in the funding round.

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