Parag Agarwal, the former CEO of Twitter (now X) ousted by Elon Musk in 2022, is now strengthening ties with Google for his AI search startup, Parallel Web Systems, according to a report by Business Insider. Founded over two and a half years ago, Parallel is valued at $2 billion and backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins. The report by BI adds that Google will now offer Parallel’s technology to Google Cloud customers building AI agents with the Gemini model. This offers Parallel access to Google’s vast enterprise clientele. Agarwal described the collaboration as “our deepest technical integration with a hyperscaler model lab to date.”Parallel has long built its product on Google Cloud, and engineers from both companies have recently worked to integrate tools so customers don’t need to build connections themselves.Why Parallel mattersAgarwal launched Parallel with the belief that AI agents will eventually search the web far more than humans. Unlike traditional search engines that prioritise readability for people, Parallel retrieves information for AI models including data buried deep within documents. This process, known as grounding, ensures AI agents have access to accurate, up-to-date information.Parallel competes with startups like Exa, which are also tackling the grounding challenge. Google Cloud president Matt Renner said the partnership reflects Google’s strategy of giving customers choice, noting that while Google has its own grounding tools, enterprises may prefer different products depending on their needs.Parallel has already landed major clients such as Harvey, a legal AI startup that uses Parallel’s search tools to combine current web information with internal data. The partnership with Google is expected to accelerate adoption across industries where AI agents are becoming central to workflows.Parag Agarwal took inspiration from Microsoft CEO Satya NadellaIn an interview, Parag Agrawal revealed that when he stepped into the high-profile CEO role at Twitter, he looked at Nadella as a blueprint for driving massive institutional change. "When I took the job at Twitter, I was really inspired by Satya, and I used to call him the founder – or a re-founder, or whatever you want to call that," Agrawal shared in the interview earlier this year.Parag Agrawal explained that taking over the top job at Twitter forced him to figure out how the social media giant could evolve under his leadership and how it could differentiate itself in a crowded tech market.“When I was taking on this Twitter CEO job, it was this moment where I had to figure out what this company was going to become with me and how it was going to be different and the inspiration I got on someone like completely changing a company a business a culture a product came from Satya and I thought of wanting to be a founder in that mold of a founder in that moment,” he said.