executivefounder
Aravind Srinivas
Co-founder and CEO, Perplexity AI
Co-founder and CEO, Perplexity
Background
Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI.
He co-founded Perplexity AI in August 2022 with Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinski.
About Perplexity
Perplexity: Perplexity AI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence company that runs an AI answer engine.
Key facts
- Current title
- Co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AIsource
- Perplexity AI founded
- 22 August 2022source
- Education
- PhD in computer science at UC Berkeleysource
- Search engine launch
- December 7, 2022source
- IIT Madras degrees
- Dual B.Tech and M.Tech in Electrical Engineering, 2017source
- PhD years at UC Berkeley
- 2017 to 2021source
- Research internships
- Several research internships at leading tech companies, 2019 to 2022source
- Perplexity AI founders
- Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho and Andy Konwinskisource
- Perplexity AI valuation
- US$20 billion as of September 2025source
- Perplexity weekly queries (as reported by Berkeley Haas)
- More than 300 million queries a weeksource
- IIT Madras degree
- Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2017source
- Role after PhD
- Research Scientist at OpenAIsource
- IIT Madras award
- Young Alumni Achiever Award 2026source
- Dual degree
- Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, 2017source
- Post-PhD role
- Joined OpenAI as a Research Scientist following his Ph.D.source
- PhD research areas
- Machine learning, reinforcement learning, contrastive learning, transformers and vision-language modelssource
- Award
- Young Alumni Achiever Award 2026, conferred by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and its alumnisource
Sources
Follow the money in philanthropy.
Who gives, who receives, and what it funds. Every Friday.