# Aravind Srinivas

> Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, the citation-backed AI answer engine that reached a $21B+ valuation in under three years. Born in Chennai in 1994, he earned a dual degree from IIT Madras before completing a PhD at UC Berkeley, then worked as a researcher at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google Brain before founding Perplexity in 2022. India's youngest billionaire at 31, he has positioned Perplexity as a direct challenger to Google Search by insisting that every AI-generated answer carry verifiable citations - a principle he lifted straight from academic paper standards.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Perplexity AI
- **Organizations:** Perplexity AI, IIT Madras, UC Berkeley, OpenAI, DeepMind, Google Brain
- **From:** Chennai, India
- **Nationality:** Indian
- **Education:** Dual Degree - B.Tech + M.Tech in Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, PhD in Computer Science (Representation Learning for Perception and Control), University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-founded Perplexity AI, reaching $21B+ valuation in under 3 years, India's youngest billionaire at age 31 (Hurun India Rich List 2025), Processed 780M+ monthly AI queries with ~247 employees

## Career timeline

- **2018** — Research Intern at OpenAI, focusing on policy gradient algorithms under John Schulman
- **2019** — Research Intern at DeepMind, co-authored CPCv2 contrastive learning paper
- **2020-2021** — Research Intern/Researcher at Google Brain, contributed to Bottleneck Transformers, HaloNet, ResNet-RS
- **2021** — Full-time Research Scientist at OpenAI working on language and diffusion models
- **2021** — Completed PhD at UC Berkeley under Pieter Abbeel
- **2022** — Co-founded Perplexity AI with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski
- **2022-12** — Launched Perplexity publicly, 7 days after ChatGPT's debut
- **2024** — Secured $73.6M Series B led by Nvidia and Jeff Bezos at $522M valuation
- **2025-01** — Submitted TikTok merger proposal day before US ban deadline
- **2025** — Perplexity crossed $100M annualized revenue; partnership with Bharti Airtel for 360M+ Indian users
- **2025-08** — Bid $34.5B for Google Chrome amid antitrust proceedings
- **2025-09** — Closed $200M at $20B valuation
- **2025-10** — Named India's youngest billionaire on Hurun India Rich List; launched Comet browser
- **2026-02** — Launched Perplexity Computer AI agent

## Achievements

- Co-founded Perplexity AI, reaching $21B+ valuation in under 3 years
- India's youngest billionaire at age 31 (Hurun India Rich List 2025)
- Processed 780M+ monthly AI queries with ~247 employees
- First person to work full-time/interned at OpenAI, DeepMind, AND Google Brain
- Indian National Mathematics Olympiad merit award recipient
- Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) scholarship recipient
- National Talent Search Scholarship recipient
- Viterbi India Fellowship (2015)
- Taught 'Deep Unsupervised Learning' course at UC Berkeley (2020, 2021)
- Secured Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, SoftBank as Perplexity investors
- Built Perplexity into a recognized alternative to Google Search
- Raised $1B+ total across 8 funding rounds

## Latest updates

- **2026-02** — Launched Perplexity Computer - AI agent for end-to-end project execution
- **2026-01** — Perplexity valuation reached $21.21B in Series E-6 round
- **2025-10** — Named India's youngest billionaire on Hurun India Rich List; Comet browser launched
- **2025-09** — Closed $200M Series E at $20B valuation
- **2025-08** — Bid $34.5B for Google Chrome amid Google antitrust proceedings
- **2025-06** — Closed $500M Series D/E at $14B valuation
- **2025-03** — Perplexity crossed $100M annualized revenue
- **2025-01** — Submitted TikTok merger proposal day before US ban deadline

## Links

- Website: https://perplexity.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aravind-srinivas-16051987/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/AravSrinivas
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aravindsrinivas/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/aravind-srinivas
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-04