Jack Dorsey resigns as Twitter CEO

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of Twitter. His replacement is Parag Agrawal, who joined Twitter in 2011 and has been CTO since October 2017.

In a resignation letter posted to Twitter, Dorsey said that he was leaving because he wanted the company to move beyond the influence of its founders.

"There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led'," he said. "Ultimately I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders."

He pointed to a solid team as the reason for leaving now. His trust in Agrawal runs "bone deep", he said, also citing the appointment of Salesforce president and COO Bret Taylor to the role of Twitter chair as a factor. Taylor joined the Twitter board in 2016 at Dorsey's request.

Dorsey will also leave the Twitter board in or around May this year.

"I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it," Dorsey said. "There aren't many founders that choose their company over their own ego."

Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006 and left in 2008, founding payments company Square, of which he is still CEO. He returned to Twitter as executive chairman in 2011 and then took over as CEO in 2015. He took the company from revenues of $774.8m in fiscal 2015 to $3.72bn in fiscal 2020.

Along the way, Twitter faced congressional scrutiny over content moderation policies and misinformation. He also pushed an initiative to decentralize Twitter with an initiative called Bluesky.

Twitter has suffered some financial setbacks recently, missing Wall Street expectations with its Q3 results last month. The company, which sold its mobile ad unit last month, reported revenue of $1.28bn for the quarter but an $800 million lawsuit settlement in September pushed losses to $537 million. The lawsuit alleged that the company had misled investors on engagement numbers. Its stock has plunged from $66.11 on October 18 to $48.68.

The stock price ramped 10% early on Monday following reports of Dorsey's resignation.