Aravind Srinivas (born 7 June 1994) is an Indian-American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, best known as the CEO and co-founder of Perplexity AI, an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

company specializing in conversational search technologies.

Early life and education

Srinivas was born in

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

, India, to a

Tamil Hindu Tamil Hindus () are the Tamil-speaking people who follow Hinduism. Hinduism was the first religion to reach the ancient Tamil kingdoms. Tamil Nadu is home to one of the largest functioning Hindu temples in the world. Tamil influence was o ...

family. He earned dual degrees ( B.Tech and M.Tech) in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He later pursued a PhD in computer science at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Career

During his academic career, Srinivas held research positions at

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

Google Brain Google Brain was a deep learning artificial intelligence research team that served as the sole AI branch of Google before being incorporated under the newer umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence ...

, and

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Go ...

focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence. In 2022, he co-founded Perplexity AI alongside Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski. The company developed an AI-powered "answer engine" designed to provide direct, cited responses to user queries, seeking to distinguish itself from traditional search engines. Under Srinivas's leadership, Perplexity AI has secured significant funding from investors including

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

, Elad Gil,

Nat Friedman Nathaniel Dourif Friedman (born 6 August 1977) is an American technology executive and investor. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of GitHub and former chairman of the GNOME Foundation. Friedman is currently a board member at the Arc Instit ...

, and

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

. The company has also announced partnerships aimed at expanding its AI applications into hardware by collaborating with

Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. It was formed in 199 ...

to develop an AI-integrated smartphone. In 2024, Srinivas stated that he had been waiting for a US

green card A green card, known officially as a permanent resident card, is an identity document which shows that a person has permanent residency in the United States. ("The term 'lawfully admitted for permanent residence' means the status of having been ...

for nearly three years.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Srinivas, Aravind 1994 births Living people Indian computer scientists American computer scientists Artificial intelligence researchers University of California, Berkeley alumni American technology company founders IIT Madras alumni OpenAI people