Who is Aravind Srinivas, Indian-origin CEO who challenged Elon Musk over USAID
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, is an Indian-origin engineer with a PhD in computer science from University of California, Berkeley.
Indian-origin CEO of artificial intelligence firm Perplexity AI, Aravind Srinivas, challenged billionaire Elon Musk a few days back to stop him from raising funding from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a stunt that made him appear in headlines all over the world.
The challenge came after USAID faced an unprecedented shutdown days after President Donald Trump labelled the agency “corrupt.”
"Considering raising $500B from USAID. Funding secured. Stop me if you can @elonmusk," he wrote a post on X.
Who is Aravind Srinivas
Aravind Srinivas is an Indian-origin engineer and entrepreneur who is the CEO and cofounder of Perplexity, an artificial intelligence-powered search engine which he describes as “fastest way to get answers to any questions”.
Aravind did his engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, earning his bachelor and master of technology degrees in electrical engineering. He then went on to earn a doctorate degree, a PhD in Computer Science from the reputed University of California, Berkeley. This is also when Aravind’s interest in artificial intelligence surged and he had a four-month stint as a research intern at OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT.
He then worked as a research intern at DeepMind, another artificial intelligence firm, for five months followed by a similar stint at Google for a year.
Aravind returned to OpenAI in 2021 after his PhD to work as a Research Scientist this time for a year, after which, he went on to cofound Perplexity in August 2022. He cofounded the firm with Andy Konwinski, Denis Yarats, and Johnny Ho and says that Perplexity AI has “built the world's first generally available conversational answer engine that directly answers questions about any topic”.
The firm is backed by several big investors, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Aravind himself is also an angel investor who has invested in many AI firms since 2023.