Billionaire Elon Musk is now the new owner of Twitter, months after making the first bid to buy the social media company in April. The billionaire has fired the social media company’s top four executives, including Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal. But did you know CEO of Space X and Tesla, Elon Musk, and former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal went to the same university?
The two share the same alma mater as they have studied PhD at California’s Stanford University. Musk’s stint at the varsity, however, lasted for just two days after being admitted to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme in material science.
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Parag, who did his BTech in computer science from IIT Bombaycompleted his PhD programme in the subject from Stanford. He had also obtained a young alumnus award from IIT Bombay for his achievements. He published a thesis on Incorporating Uncertainty in Data Management and Integration in 2012. Before joining Twitter, he also held leadership positions at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Research.
Agarwal who has been associated with Twitter since 2011 was its CTO by 2017. He was referred to as one of the ‘first choices’ of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to take his position. Not just Dorsey, Agarwal’s teachers also recall him to be one of the ‘brightest’ and smartest students.
Musk chose the path of entrepreneurship and launched his first technology company Zip2 in 1995. He went on to lay the foundation for several successful companies including Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX among others.
Musk had earlier accused Parag Agrawal of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the social media platform. However, Agarwal will not be leaving empty-handed. According to a report in Reuters, Agrawal will make an estimated $42 million including a year’s worth of Parag’s base salary and accelerated vesting of all equity awards.
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