Parallel Web Systems Raises $100 Million for Agentic AI Efforts

Parallel Web Systems, an AI startup launched by Twitter’s ex-CEO, has raised $100 million.

The company said its Series A round, announced Wednesday (April 29), values Parallel at $740 million and will allow it to focus on building products designed around the notion of artificial intelligence (AI) as the “second user” of the internet.

“Two years ago, when we started the company, there weren’t any agents on the web,” Parallel said in its announcement. “The prevailing view was that large language models would render the web obsolete. Why would agents need to search when every model had the entirety of the internet in its training data? We believed the opposite: AIs would use the web far more than humans ever have.”

According to the announcement, the company offers two types of products. First are web tools “built as primitives” for search, extraction and retrieval for agents to use. The other are web agents designed for structured enrichment, deep research and to automate workflows.

“Agents are our users. AI-native builders are our customers,” Parallel added.

PYMNTS wrote about the shift Parallel describes earlier this week, writing that a “fundamental assumption” about the internet had vanished.

“Automated traffic now accounts for the majority of online activity, and a growing share of that activity is not malicious but functional,” that report said. “Software agents are booking travel, managing subscriptions, executing purchases and interacting with platforms on behalf of users.”

This has profound implications for identity and authentication, with research by PYMNTS Intelligence and Trulioo showing that more than 90% of organizations saying that managing bot traffic is now a challenge.

While digital security and authentication infrastructure has rested on the premise that people interact with systems, and systems respond, today’s environment increasingly is shaped by automated agents and evolving threats. That means identity can’t be viewed as a static attribute.

“Not all bots are malicious. Many are legitimate agents acting on behalf of users. The challenge lies in distinguishing between helpful automation and adversarial behavior,” PYMNTS wrote.

Parallel was launched by Parag Agrawal, who had been chief executive at Twitter prior to Elon Musk’s takeover. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal about the Series A, he said he plans to expand the company’s products and customer base over the next year.

“Every few weeks, we solve one bottleneck and hit another somewhere,” Agrawal said. “We’re building some things I’m really excited about. I wouldn’t work here if I wasn’t.”