Parag Agrawal Stages Silicon Valley Comeback With AI Beating GPT-5
- Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal launches Parallel Web Systems, an AI startup specializing in real-time web research.
- Ultra8x engine reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-5 and humans in top research benchmarks.
- Backed by $30M funding, Parallel targets developers, retailers, and AI companies with fast, reliable data APIs.
Nearly three years after his abrupt ouster from Twitter by Elon Musk, Parag Agrawal is making a high-profile comeback this time at the helm of his own artificial intelligence venture.
Agrawal’s new company, Parallel Web Systems Inc., founded in 2023, is already making waves in Silicon Valley. Operating with a 25-member team and backed by top investors including Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures, Parallel has secured $30 million in funding.
The startup specializes in agentic AI systems that can pull, verify, and analyze real-time data directly from the public web. With eight specialized 'research engines', Parallel’s most advanced model, Ultra8x, reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-5 and even human researchers in rigorous benchmarks such as BrowseComp and DeepResearch Bench.
Applications span from coding assistants pulling live GitHub snippets to retailers tracking competitor catalogs in real time. Developers can integrate the platform via three APIs, including a low-latency version for chatbots.
Agrawal, who was removed as Twitter CEO following Musk’s $44 billion takeover in 2022, spent the intervening years exploring AI innovations before focusing on enhancing how AI agents search and interpret web information. He envisions a near future where individuals deploy dozens of autonomous agents to work online simultaneously.
With its focus on speed, accuracy, and reliability, Parallel is positioning itself as a formidable contender in the next phase of AI evolution and perhaps as an indirect rival to Musk in the race for AI dominance.
