Meet IIT grad who worked with Google, then built Rs 4300 crore company

Graduates from all IIT institutions mostly get higher salary packages from big corporate companies. However, some choose to start their own company. One such IIT alumnus who co-founded his firm is Aravind Srinivas. He is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI. He holds a dual degree of B.Tech and M.Tech in electrical engineering from IIT-Madras. The AI firm was founded by Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Andy Konwinski and Johnny Ho in 2022.

Srinivas had previously interned at DeepMind, Google, and OpenAI. He then assumed the role of a research scientist at OpenAI. Srinivas also holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Earlier this month, the company bagged USD 73.6 million (around Rs 600 crore) in funding from US chip maker Nvidia and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others. The funding round was led by Institutional Venture Partners with additional support from NEA and Databricks Ventures. It valued the AI startup at USD 520 million (Rs 4300 crore). Perplexity AI features a chatbot-style interface, enabling users to ask questions using day-to-day language. It also provides an AI assistant named Copilot.

Srinivas is active on social media and has 45.6K followers on X (formerly Twitter). He recently shared a picture with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the microblogging site. Replying to an X user who said Perplexity, and not Microsoft, will make Google dance", Srinivas said, "Let's make them dance."

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