Indian-origin entrepreneur Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, has made global headlines after challenging billionaire Elon Musk over funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Srinivas’ post on X (formerly Twitter) came after a quick shutdown of USAID consequent to comments by President Donald Trump branding the organization as “corrupt.” His tweet went viral and the post caught the eye of artificial intelligence fans everywhere along with tech leaders. The post read on X, “Considering raising $500B from USAID. Funding secured. Stop me if you can @elonmusk.”
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Who Is Aravind Srinivas?
Aravind Srinivas is renown for his artificial intelligence (AI) studies, he is an engineer and businessperson of Indian origin. He is co-founder of the next generation AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI and calls it the “fastest way to find answers to any questions.”
Arvind Srinivas got his bachelor degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Subsequently, he obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he became more interested in artificial intelligence.
Throughout his college years, he was a research intern for OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google. Before co-creating Perplexity AI in August 2022 with Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho, he became a Research Scientist with OpenAI in 2021.
What is the Perplexity AI
Designed to offer consumers direct conversational answers, Perplexity AI is an AI-driven search engine. Srinivas asserts this is the “built the world’s first generally available conversational answer engine that directly answers questions about any topic.”
Since 2023, major investors, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have been drawn to the company, Srinivas has also become an angel investor supporting a few AI companies.
