Former Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Parag Agrawal today announced that his startup, Parallel Web Systems, has raised $100 million in an early-stage round to build web search infrastructure designed specifically for artificial intelligence agents.

The Series A round values the company at $740 million and was co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures, with Spark Capital and existing backers Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and Terrain also participating. Kleiner Perkins’ Mamoon Hamid joins Vinod Khosla, Shardul Shah and Josh Kopelman on the board.

The company was founded two years ago, raising $30 million in January 2024.

Parallel is trying to solve a problem created by the rise of AI: Most AI models still rely on static, outdated snapshots of the internet. The company is building a new layer of web plumbing – application programming interfaces, APIs, that give AI systems real-time access to fresh, reliable online information so they can complete tasks accurately, reducing the hallucinations that occur when models lack live data.

Agrawal has said enterprise customers are already using Parallel’s infrastructure to support AI agents that can write software, analyze sales data and evaluate insurance risk. All of these tasks depend on having high-quality, continually updated web information combined with the company’s own internal data.

Agrawal also hopes to address the escalating conflict between AI companies and content owners. Web scraping of licensed material has triggered lawsuits, more paywalls and broader access restrictions, which in turn have reduced publisher traffic.

Parallel, he says, will create an “open market mechanism” intended to compensate creators and encourage them to keep content accessible. The specifics of this system have not yet been detailed.

Photo: Parallel