Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal's AI agent-tool startup, Parallel Web Systems, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also threw some money in the pot, the company confirmed. The raise comes just five months after Parallel announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation, led by Kleiner and Index, bringing total capital raised to $230 million. Apparently, investors are not tired of throwing cash at AI startups yet.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents, with customers including Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It also claims unnamed banks and hedge funds are clients, though they're probably just shy. The startup says it has over 100,000 developers using its products, which is either impressive or a sign that everyone is jumping on the AI bandwagon.
For Agrawal, the confidence of investors must be particularly gratifying after his time at Twitter ended with a lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all top execs after buying Twitter, leading to a legal battle over $128 million in unpaid severance. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms, which likely means Agrawal got a check but not the satisfaction of a public apology.