Jack Dorsey is stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the company announced Monday. He will be succeeded by CTO Parag Agrawal, effective immediately.

The big picture: Dorsey is also the CEO of financial payments company Square, which he co-founded in 2009, and has become a crypto evangelist in recent years.

• Agrawal’s been with Twitter for over a decade. He’s led the company’s major products efforts, including most recently overseeing Twitter’s decentralized social network standard called “Project BlueSky.”

Our thought bubble, via Axios’ Scott Rosenberg: Twitter’s messaging service was Dorsey’s idea 15 years ago, and he led the company through a period of endless controversy surrounding former President Trump’s use of the social media site as a personal megaphone.

• Today, the service sits at the center of the U.S. news ecosystem and has gathered much of the real-time energy of social media, but Twitter has never achieved anything close to Facebook’s financial success or scale.

What he’s saying: “There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’ 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. There are 3 reasons I believe now is the right time” to leave, Dorsey said.

• “The first is Parag becoming our CEO,” Dorsey added. “He’s been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs … My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.”
• “The second is Bret Taylor agreeing to become our board chair. I asked Bret to join our board when I became CEO, and he’s been excellent in every way … Having Bret in this leadership role gives me a lot of confidence in the strength of our board going forward.”
• “The third is all of you,” Dorsey said, addressing Twitter users. “All of you have the potential to change the course of this company for the better.”

Background: Dorsey created Twitter alongside Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams in 2006 and launched the platform in July of that year.

• Dorsey’s first stint as chief executive ended in 2008 after being pushed out by Twitter’s board. He returned to the role in 2015 when former CEO Dick Costolo left the company.
• The platform said it had 211 million daily active users last quarter.

What’s next: Dorsey said he will serve on Twitter’s board through his term, which ends around May, “to help Parag and Bret with the transition.”

• He said he will not stay with Twitter after that “to give Parag the space he needs to leave,” adding, “I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.”

Go deeper: Dorsey pushes back vs. “founder-led” companies in resignation letter