Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Jack Dorsey resigns as CEO of Twitter, hands reins to CTO Parag Agrawal

It looks like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is leaving the chief executive’s office once again — but this time, it’s by choice.

Sources within Twitter first shared the news with CNBC earlier this morning, and it’s now been confirmed by Dorsey himself — quite appropriately via a Tweet on his social media platform. 

Recommended Videos

not sure anyone has heard but,

I resigned from Twitter pic.twitter.com/G5tUkSSxkl

— jack (@jack) November 29, 2021

Please enable Javascript to view this content

While the original reports didn’t have much to say about why Dorsey was stepping down, or when it would be happening, it didn’t take long for the erstwhile CEO to share the news himself. In his tweet, Dorsey includes a screenshot of the email that he sent internally to Twitter employees, describing it as part of his desire for Twitter “to be the most transparent company ever.” 

Dorsey explains that although he will continue to serve on the board until the end of his term next spring, as of today, he is officially handing over the reins of CEO to Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, as confirmed by the company’s board of directors. The board also named Bret Taylor as the new chairman of the board, He will succeed Patrick Pichette in that role. 

In his internal email, Dorsey also shared that he has no plans to remain on the board after his term expires, as he feels “it’s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead.” 

Dorsey says that he’s leaving because he feels it’s best to separate a company from its founders, and that now is the right time to do so. “I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction,” Dorsey said in the message to Twitter employees. 

Based on the message, it appears that Dorsey has been planning this for a while. He noted that he’s been working hard “to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.” It’s just been a matter of finding the right person to take over the helm, and Dorsey had been grooming Agrawal for some time, due to “how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”

“Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He’s curious, probing, rationale relative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is something I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” Dorsey told employees in the internal email.

Dorsey’s past with Twitter has been marred by controversies

Over the years, Dorsey has had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the company that he helped to create in 2006. He initially served as CEO until 2008, but was pushed out of the role after his co-founder Evan Williams and the board felt that he was unfit to lead the growing social media company. 

While Dorsey remained with Twitter as chairman of the board, he refocused most of his attention elsewhere, forming the popular mobile payment company Square. Once that was up and running, Dorsey rejoined Twitter in early 2011 to focus on product development, dividing his time between that and his ongoing work at Square. 

After four more years of struggling to come up with a long-term vision, Twitter’s board returned Dorsey to the position of permanent CEO of Twitter in fall 2015, replacing Dick Costolo, who had taken over from Williams in 2010.

During Dorsey’s second tenure, he’s presided over a social network that’s faced some significantly new and different challenges. 

Trump with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stylized image
Getty Images/Digital Trends Graphic

For starters, Twitter has become a hotbed for oft-heated political discourse, forcing the company to take steps to combat hate speech and even ban political advertising. 

Dorsey has also presided over at least two major challenges to his leadership, first getting into a dispute with the board in 2016 over its plans to sell the social media company off to a larger company like Google, Salesforce, or Disney. 

While Dorsey’s vision for Twitter ultimately won out, his seemingly divided loyalties caused another furor in early 2020 when billionaire investor Paul Singer and his firm, Elliott Managemen,t sought to replace Dorsey over the fact that he was splitting his time with Square and his desire to also move to Africa for six months out of every year. Dorsey is the only person to serve as CEO of two publicly traded multibillion dollar public companies at the same time. 

Nonetheless, until now, Dorsey has been adamant about remaining CEO of both companies. He has also generally remained quite popular within the ranks of Twitter, due to such altruistic moves as taking a token salary of $1.40 a year, and donating hundreds of millions of dollars in shares to employees. 

Agrawal takes over the role effective immediately. Agrawal has been with Twitter since 2011, where he started out in the modest role of software engineer. In 2017, he took on the mantle of CTO, where he was responsible for overall technical strategy, with a focus on advancing the state of machine learning within the company. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science andengineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

Jesse Hollington
Jesse has been a Mobile Writer for Digital Trends since 2021 and a technology enthusiast for his entire life — he was…
Google urges iPhone users to switch to standalone Gemini app
Gemini app on iPhone.

Last fall, Google introduced a standalone Gemini app for iOS. At the same time, the AI assistant remained in the standalone Google app. That’s now changing. As 9to5Google first noted, Google is informing iOS users that it will remove Gemini support from the Google app. In doing so, it wants you to rely solely on the Gemini app.

In an email to iOS users, Google says: “We’re making some changes to create an even better Gemini experience on iOS. Gemini is now available as its own app, and that’s now the best place to use Gemini. To continue using Gemini, download the new Gemini app from the App Store. With the Gemini app, you’ll have access to all of the same features and more.”

Read more
The Humane AI Pin was always destined to fail, here’s why
Humane's Ai Pin device.

CES 2024 saw a wave of innovations in the AI space, and one of the most hyped was the Humane AI Pin which launched to much aplomb thanks to the founders’ previous work at Apple. Except, it quickly became clear that — despite raising hundreds of millions of dollars — the company had a battle to persuade people that this was the future.

I saw the Humane AI Pin at CES last year and at first, I was excited about a dedicated AI device. However, a high price tag, a required monthly subscription, and a lack of clear purpose made it

Read more
OnePlus makes the best Android phone and watch combo you can get right now
The OnePlus 13 and OnePlus Watch 3.

Something unexpected has happened. There’s a fantastic smartphone and smartwatch combination available to buy right now that I think you’d be mad to pass by, and it’s not an Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max and Apple Watch Series 10. It’s not a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and a Galaxy Watch 7 either. It’s the OnePlus 13 and the OnePlus Watch 3, and I think it’s the best Android phone and watch pairing I’ve come across in ages.
Brilliant products

I should explain why this was unexpected, at least to me. The OnePlus Watch 3 is the first OnePlus smartwatch I’ve used, and what I’d heard about previous models from colleagues didn’t really make me feel as if I was missing out. From poor quality health tracking results to a crown that rotated by didn’t actually do anything, I was always confident in recommending Samsung’s trusty Galaxy Watch or a Mobvoi TicWatch as the smartwatch to get if you owned an Android phone.

Read more