Parallel Web Systems exits stealth mode with $30 million in funding and claims to outperform GPT-5 on research benchmarks.
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has unveiled his artificial intelligence startup, Parallel Web Systems Inc., marking his return to the tech industry nearly three years after being ousted by Elon Musk. The Palo Alto-based company emerged from stealth mode this week with a cloud-based research platform designed to help AI agents autonomously collect and analyze information from the web.
Bold Claims Against Industry Leaders
Agrawal announced the launch through a LinkedIn post on Friday, highlighting the debut of the company's first major product, the Deep Research API, which he claims outperforms humans and leading AI models, including OpenAI's GPT-5, on two of the hardest benchmarks.
According to the company, its software already completes millions of research tasks per day for early adopters, including "some of the fastest growing AI companies." The platform offers eight AI research engines with varying capabilities, ranging from rapid one-minute processing to more comprehensive research tasks that can take up to 30 minutes.
Strong Financial Backing and Team
Bloomberg reported that Agrawal has raised $30 million in funding for Parallel and leads a 25-person team. The startup is backed by prominent investors, including Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures.
"We already power millions of research tasks every day, across ambitious startups and public enterprises," Agrawal wrote on LinkedIn. "Some of the fastest-growing AI companies use Parallel to bring web intelligence directly into their platforms and agents."
Vision for AI-Dominated Internet
Agrawal's venture is built on a bold prediction about the future of internet usage. "There'll be more agents on the internet than there are humans around. You will probably deploy 50 agents on your behalf to be on the internet," Agrawal told Bloomberg. "I think that's going to happen soon, like next year."
This vision aligns with broader industry trends. Coinbase developers recently described autonomous AI agents as Ethereum's future "biggest power user," suggesting they could enable everything from self-driving taxis that pay for their fuel to AI models that monetize content on demand.
Agrawal's experience in managing one of the world's largest social media platforms may provide unique insights into addressing the challenges of AI governance and implementation at scale. The startup's emphasis on real-time AI research and enterprise applications reflects growing demand for AI systems that can access and analyze current information from the web, rather than relying solely on static training data.
