Aravind Srinivas: The Indian Innovator Shaping the Future of AI with Perplexity

Aravind is an Indian computer programmer, researcher, and scientist, as well as the CEO and co-founder of Perplexity.ai. He grew up in Chennai and studied Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras. Srinivas started his career as a research intern at OpenAI and later interned at Google’s DeepMind and later Google itself. He later shifted to the USA to do his Ph.D in AI and deep learning from the University of California, Berkeley. His research was based on reinforcement learning, contrastive learning, and deep learning. 

In 2022, Srinivas along with Denis Yarats, Andy Konwinski, and Johnny Ho co-founded Perplexity.ai. 

Aravind Srinivas - Biography

Aravind Srinivas - Early Life and Education

Aravind grew up in Chennai, India, and studied at IIT Madras (Electrical Engineering). He started interning at OpenAI and later went on to intern at Google’s DeepMind and later Google. Soon he shifted to the United States to complete his Ph.D in AI and Deep Learning from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research included working on deep learning, reinforcement learning, and self-supervised learning. 

Aravind Srinivas - Career Highlights

Aravind spoke about his drive to learn about deep learning and entrepreneurship. This led him to intern at DeepMind. It was during this time that he read about Larry Page, the founder of Google, and the evolution of PageRank. This led to him interning with the inventor of transformers, Ashish Vaswani, where they worked on developing deep learning models for vision and making transformers more universal for computation. This drew Srinivas to build a product that provides users with faster, more accurate, and truthful answers. This is what led to the creation of Perplexity AI. 

The creation of Perplexity AI

In 2022 Aravind co-founded Perplexity AI with Denis Yarats, Andy Konwinski, and Johnny Ho. The company is working towards building a trusted information service. Perplexity AI works mainly as a search engine that uses advanced AI technology to answer user queries and has the ability to discover AI use cases and challenge other tools such as ChatGPT and Google Search. It uses mostly conversational search engine options that let users ask questions and receive accurate answers with online citations. The citations work as user guides to provide truthful answers and provide them with additional reading options.  

In 2024, the company bagged $73.6 million or INR 600 crore in funding from US chip maker Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The funding was led by Institutional Venture Partners with additional funding from Databricks Ventures and NEA. The AI was valued at $520 million. It also has an AI assistant named Copilot. 

Aravind Srinivas - Angel Investor

Since 2023, Aravind has been working as an angel investor as well. His early angel investments have focused on companies that develop AI capabilities or approach these in multiple ways. Some of those investments include:

• ElevenLabs - Working on text-to-speech and voice cloning software 
• Pika - Developing a text-to-video platform 
• Suno - Developing a text-to-music platform 
• Julius - Developing an AI data scientist for the analysis of multiple data sources 
• Extropic - Developing novel hardware for generative AI computation

Aravind Srinivas - Awards & Recognitions

Some of the awards and recognitions that Aravind Srinivas has won are:

• Viterbi India Fellowship: Received by Indo-US Science and Technology in May 2015 
• Indian National Mathematics Olympiad Merit Awardee: National Board of Higher Mathematics 
• Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana: Department of Science and Technology, from the Government of India 
• National Talent Search Scholarship: Government of India 

Aravind Srinivas - Facts

• Aravind won the NTS scholarship from the Government of India and the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana scholarship from the Department of Science and Technology 
• He won the merit award at the Indian National Mathematical Olympiad, from the National Board for Higher Mathematics (NBHM) 
• He went into depression as he could not secure admission in Computer Science and was admitted into electrical engineering at IIT Madras 
• His Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) was 0.01 lower than the required amount so he lost his chance to change his course 
• In 2015 he received the IUSSTF-Viterbi Program Fellowship, that is a program partnered with the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC)
• He was recognized by John Schulman, the inventor of ChatGPT, and got his first internship at OpenAI in 2018 
• In 2019 he was a research intern at DeepMind and at Google from 2020-2021
• In 2024 he signed up for the game show Squid Game (Season 3) 

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FAQs

Who is Aravind Srinivas?

Aravind Srinivas is an Indian innovator and the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI.

What is Perplexity AI?

Perplexity AI is a company focused on building conversational AI search engines that provide direct answers with source citations, unlike traditional search engines.

What is Srinivas's contribution to the field of AI?

He is considered a rising star in the AI field, pushing the boundaries of conversational search and information access.