Aravind Srinivas initially faced disappointment from his mother when he was accepted to the University of California, Berkeley for his PhD instead of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, his journey on the west coast led him to intern at OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind, both of which are leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). With this valuable experience, he co-founded Perplexity, a generative-AI startup valued at $1bn, offering fast, Wikipedia-like responses to search queries. Despite his unassuming demeanor, Mr. Srinivas is ambitious and aims to compete with Google search, one of the most successful business models in history.
A student of disruption, Mr. Srinivas reflects on how the engineer-led, innovative culture of OpenAI disrupted the research-focused, hierarchical environment of DeepMind. Drawing parallels to Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” he identifies Alphabet, Google’s parent company, as having potential vulnerabilities that Perplexity can exploit. While some see Perplexity and similar generative-AI platforms as threats to Google, Mr. Srinivas believes that these arguments miss the mark and the true potential for disruption in the industry.